PRIVATE 

OF 

CHARLES  A.  XOFOID. 

Cost.  £ 


GIFT  OF 


W 


MY     SUMMER 


IN    A    GARDEN. 


BY 


CHARLES  DUDLEY   WARNER. 


BOSTON: 
JAMES    R.    OSGOOD    &    CO., 

LATE  TICKNOR  &  FIELDS,  AND  FIELDS,  OSdOOD,  &  CO. 
I87I. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1870, 

BY  FIELDS,  OSGOOD,  &  CO., 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


Rand,  Avcry,  &  Frtjc,  Stercotyj>ers  and  Printers,  Boston. 


INTRODUCTORY  LETTER. 


MY  DEAR  MR.  FIELDS,  —  I  did  prom 
ise  to  write  an  Introduction  to  these 
charming  papers ;  but  an  Introduction,  — 
what  is  it  ?  —  a  sort  of  pilaster,  put  upon  the 
face  of  a  building  for  look's  sake,  and  usually 
flat, — very  flat.  Sometimes  it  may  be  called 
a  caryatid,  which  is,  as  I  understand  it,  a  cru,el 
device  of  architecture,  representing  a  man  or 
a  woman,  obliged  to  hold  up  upon  his  or  her 
head  or  shoulders  a  structure  which  they  did 
not  build,  and  which  could  stand  just  as  well 
without  as  with  them.  But  an  Introduction 
is  more  apt  to  be  a  pillar,  such  as  one  may  see 
in  Baalbec,  standing  up  in  the  air  all  alone, 
with  nothing  on  it,  and  with  nothing  for  it 
to  do. 

But   an  Introductory   Letter   is   different. 

iii 

247482 


IV  INTRODUCTORY  LETTER. 

There  is  in  that  no  formality,  no  assumption 
of  function,  no  awkward  propriety  or  dignity 
to  be  sustained.  A  letter  at  the  opening  of 
a  book  may  be  only  a  footpath,  leading  the 
curious  to  a  favorable  point  of  observation, 
and  then  leaving  them  to  wander  as  they  will. 

Sluggards  have  been  sent  to  the^ant  for 
wisdom  ;  but  writers  might  better  be  sent  to 
the  spider,  —  not  because  he  works  all  night, 
and  watches  all  day,  but  because  he  works 
unconsciously.  He  dare  not  even  bring  his 
work  before  his  own  eyes,  but  keeps  it  be 
hind  him,  as  if  too  much  knowledge  of  what 
one  is  doing  would  spoil  the  delicacy  and 
modesty  of  one's  work. 

Almost  all  graceful  and  fanciful  work  is 
born  like  a  dream,  that  comes  noiselessly,  and 
tarries  silently,  and  goes  as  a  bubble  bursts. 
And  yet  somewhere  work  must  come  in,  — 
real,  well-considered  work. 

Inness  (the  best  American  painter  of  Na 
ture  in  her  moods  of  real  human  feeling) 
once  said,  "  No  man  can  do  any  thing  in  art, 
unless  he  has  intuitions  ;  but,  between  whiles, 


INTRODUCTORY    LETTER.  v 

ono  must  work  hard  in  collecting  the  materials 
out  of  which  intuitions  are  made."  The 
truth  could  not  be  hit  off  better.  Knowl 
edge  is  the  soil,  and  intuitions  are  the  flowers 
which  grow  up  out  of  it.  The  soil  must  be 
well  enriched  and  worked. 

It  is  very  plain,  or  will  be  to  those  who 
read  these  papers,  now  gathered  up  into  this 
book,  as  into  a  chariot  for  a  race,  that  the 
author  has  long  employed  his  eyes,  his  ears, 
and  his  understanding,  in  observing  and  con 
sidering  the  facts  of  Nature,  and  in  weaving 
curious  analogies.  Being  an  editor  of  one 
of  the  oldest  daily  newspapers  in  New 
England,  and  obliged  to  fill  its  columns  day 
after  day  (as  the  village  mill  is  obliged  to 
render  every  day  so  many  sacks  of  flour  or 
of  meal  to  its  hungry  customers),  it  naturally 
occurred  to  him,  "  Why  not  write  something 
which  I  myself,  as  well  as  my -readers,  shall 
enjoy  ?  The  market  gives  them  facts 
enough ;  politics,  lies  enough ;  art,  affecta 
tions  enough ;  criminal  news,  horrors  enough ; 


VI  INTRODUCTORY    LETTER. 

x 

fashion,  more  than  enough  of  vanity  upon 
vanity,  and  vexation  of  purse.  Why  should 
they  not  have  some  of  those  wandering  and 
joyous  fancies  which  solace  my  hours  ?  " 

The  suggestion  ripened  into  execution. 
Men  and  women  read,  and  wanted  more. 
These  garden  letters  began  to  blossom  every 
week ;  and  many  hands  were  glad  to  gather 
pleasure  from  them.  A  sign  it  was  of  wis 
dom.  In  our  feverish  days,  it  is  a  sign  of 
health  or  of  convalescence  that  men  love 
gentle  pleasure,  and  enjoyments  that  do  not 
rush  or  roar,  but  distil  as  the  dew. 

The  love  of  rural  life,  the  habit  of  finding 
enjoyment  in  familiar  things,  that  suscepti 
bility  to  Nature  which  keeps  the  nerve  gently 
thrilled  in  her  homeliest  nooks  and  by  her 
commonest  sounds,  is  worth  a  thousand  for 
tunes  of  money,  or  its  equivalents. 

Every  book  which  interprets  the  secret  lore 
of  fields  and  gardens,  every  essay  that  brings 
men  nearer  to  the  understanding  of  the  mys 
teries  which  every  tree  whispers,  every  brook 


INTRODUCTORY  LETTER.  Vll 

murmurs,  every  weed,  even,  hints,  is  a  con 
tribution  to  the  wealth  and  the  happiness  of 
our  kind.  And  if  the  lines  of  the  writer 
shall  be  traced  in  quaint  characters,  and  be 
filled  with  a  grave  humor,  or  break  out  at 
times  into  merriment,  all  this  will  be  no  pre 
sumption  -  against  their  wisdom  or  his  good 
ness.  Is  the  oak  less  strong  and  tough 
because  the  mosses  and  weather-stains  stick 
in  all  manner  of  grotesque  sketches  along  its 
bark  ?  Now,  truly,  one  may  not  learn  from 
this  little  book  either  divinity  or  horticulture  ; 
.but  if  he  gets  a  pure  happiness,  and  a  ten 
dency  to  repeat  the  happiness  from  the  sim 
ple  stores  of  Nature,  he  will  gain  from  our 
friend's  garden  what  Adam  lost  in  his,  and 
what  neither  philosophy  nor  divinity  has 
always  been  able  to  restore. 

Wherefore,  thanking  you  for  listening  to  a 
former  letter,  which  begged  you  to  consider 
whether  these  curious  and  ingenious  papers, 
that  go  winding  about  like  a  half-trodden 
path  between  the  garden  and  the  field,  might 


Vlii  INTRODUCTORY  CHAPTER. 

not  be  given  in  book-form  to  your  million 
readers,  I  remain,  yours  to  command  in 
every  thing  but  the  writing  of  an  Introduc 
tion, 

WARD   BEECIIEB. 


BY   WAY  OF  DEDICATION. 


DEAR  POLLY,— When  a  few  of 

these  papers  had  appeared  in  "The 
Courant,"  I  was  encouraged  to  continue 
them  by  hearing  that  they  had  at  least  one 
reader  who  read  them  with  the  serious  mind 
from  which  alone  profit  is  to  be  expected. 
It  was  a  maiden  lady,  who,  I  am  sure,  was  no 
more  to  blame  for  her  singleness  than  for  her 
age ;  and  she  looked  to  these  honest  sketches 
of  experience  for  that  aid  which  the  profes 
sional  agricultural  papers  could  not  give  in 
the  management  of  the  little  bit  of  garden 
which  she  called  her  own.  She  may  have 
been  my  only  disciple  ;  and  I  confess  that  the 
thought  of  her  yielding  a  simple  faith  to 
what  a  gainsaying  world  may  have  regarded 
with  levity  has  contributed  much  to  give  an 


X  BY  WAY  OF  DEDICATION. 

increased  practical  turn  to  my  reports  of 
what  I  know  about  gardening.  The  thought 
that  I  had  misled  a  lady,  whose  age  is  not 
her  only  singularity,  who  looked  to  me  for 
advice  which  should  be  not  at  all  the  fanciful 
product  of  the  Garden  of  Gull,  would  give 
me  great  pain.  I  trust  that  her  autumn  is  a 
peaceful  one,  and  undisturbed  by  either  the 
humorous  or  the  satirical  side  of  Nature. 

You  know  that  this  attempt  to  tell  the 
truth  about  one  of  the  most  fascinating  occu 
pations  in  the  world  has  not  been  without 
its  dangers.  I  have  received  anonymous 
letters.  Some  of  them  were  murderously 
spelled;  others  were  missives  in  such 
elegant  phrase  and  dress,  that  danger  was 
only  to  be  apprehended  in  them  by  one 
skilled  in  the  mysteries  of  mediaeval  poison 
ing,  when  death  flew  on  the  wings'  of  a 
perfume.  One  lady,  whose  entreaty  that  I 
should  pause  had  something  of  command  in 
it,  wrote  that  my  strictures  on  "  pusley  "  had 
so  inflamed  her  husband's  zeal,  that,  in  her 
absence  in  the  country,  he  had  rooted  up  all 


BY   WAY  OF  DEDICATION.  XI 

her  beds  of  portulaca  (a  sort  of  cousin  of  the 
fat  weed),  and  utterly  cast  it  out.  It  is, 
however,  to  be  expected,  that  retributive 
justice  would  visit  the  innocent  as  well  as 
the  guilty  of  an  offending  family.  This  is 
only  another  proof  of  the  wide  sweep  of 
moral  forces.  I  suppose  that  it  is  as  neces 
sary  in  the  vegetable  world  as  it  is  elsewhere 
to  avoid  the  appearance  of  evil. 

In  offering  you  the  fruit  of  my  garden, 
which  has  been  gathered  from  week  to  week, 
without  much  reference  to  the  progress  of 
the  crops  or  the  drought,  I  desire  to 
acknowledge  an  influence  which  has  lent  half 
the  charm  to  my  labor.  If  I  were  in  a  court 
of  justice,  or  injustice,  under  oath,  I  should 
not  like  to  say,  that  either  in  the  wooing  days 
of  spring,  or  under  the  suns  of  the  summer 
solstioe,  you  had  been,  either  with  hoe,  rake, 
or  miniature  spade,  of  the  least  use  in  the 
garden ;  but  your  suggestions  have  been  in 
valuable,  and,  whenever  used,  have  been  paid 
for.  Your  horticultural  inquiries  have  been 
of  a  nature  to  astonish  the  vegetable  world, 


Xll  BY  WAY  OF  DEDICATION. 

if  it  listened,  and  were  a  constant  inspiration 
to  research.  There  was  almost  nothing  that 
you  did  not  wish  to  know ;  and  this,  added  to 
what  I  wished  to  know,  made  a  boundless 
field  for  discovery.  What  might  have  be 
come  of  the  garden  if  your  advice  had  been 
followed,  a  good  Providence  only  knows ;  but 
I  never  worked  there  without  a  consciousness 
that  you  might  at  any  moment  come  down 
the  walk,  under  the  grape-arbor,  bestowing 
glances  of  approval,  that  were  none  the 
worse  for  not  being  critical ;  exercising  a 
sort  of  superintendence  that  elevated  gar 
dening  into  a  fine  art ;  expressing  a  wonder 
that  was  as  complimentary  to  me  as  it  was  to 
Nature  ;  bringing  an  atmosphere  which  made 
the  garden  a  region  of  romance,  the  soil  of 
which  was  set  apart  for  fruits  native  to  climes 
unseen.  It  was  this  bright  presence  that 
filled  the  garden,  as  it  did  the  summer,  with 
light,  and  now  leaves  upon  it  that  tender 
play  of  color  and  bloom  which  is  called 
among  the  Alps  the  afterglow.  c.  r>.  w. 

NOOK  FARM,  HARTFORD,  October,  1870. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN. 


PRELIMINARY. 

rriHE  love  of  dirt  is  among  the  earliest 
-*-  of  passions,  as  it  is  the  latest.  Mud- 
pies  gratify  one  of  our  first  and  best  in 
stincts.  So  long  as  we  are  dirty,  we  are 
pure.  Fondness  for  the  ground  comes 
back  to  a  man  after  he  has  run  the 
round  of  pleasure  and  business,  eaten 
dirt,  and  sown  wild-oats,  drifted  about 
the  world,  and  taken  the  wind  of  all  its 
moods.  The  love  of  digging  in  the 
ground  (or  of  looking  on  while  he  pays 
another  to  dig)  is  as  sure  to  come  back 
to  him,  as  he  is  sure,  at  last,  to  go  under 


2  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

the  ground,  and  stay  there.  To  own  a 
bit  of  ground,  to  scratch  it  with  a  hoe, 
to  plant  seeds,  and  watch  their  renewal 
of  life,  —  this  is  the  commonest  delight 
of  the  race,  the  most  satisfactory  thing  a 
man  can  do.  When  Cicero  writes  of  the 
pleasures  of  old  age,  that  of  agriculture 
is  chief  among  them :  "  Venio  nunc  ad 
voluptates  agricolarum,  quibus  ego  in- 
credibiliter  detector:  quce  nee  ulla  im- 
pediunter  senectute,  et  mihi  ad  sapientis 
vitam  proxime  videntur  accedere"  (I 
am  driven  to  Latin  because  New- York 
editors  have  exhausted  the  English  lan 
guage  in  the  praising  of  spring,  and  es 
pecially  of  the  month  of  May.) 

Let  us  celebrate  the  soil.  Most  men 
toil  that  they  may  own  a  piece  of  it ; 
they  measure  their  success  in  life  by  their 
ability  to  buy  it.  It  is  alike  the  passion 
of  the  parvenu  and  the  pride  of  the 
aristocrat.  Broad  acres  are  a  patent  of 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  3 

nobility ;  and  no  man  but  feels  more  of  a 
man  in  the  world  if  he  have  a  bit  of 
ground  that  he  can  call  his  own.  How 
ever  small  it  is  on  the  surface,  it  is  four 
thousand  miles  deep ;  and  that  is  a  very 
handsome  property.  And  there  is  a 
great  pleasure  in  working  in  the  soil, 
apart  from  the  ownership  of  it.  The 
man  who  has  planted  a  garden  feels  that 
he  has  done  something  for  the  good  of 
the  world.  He  belongs  to  the  produ 
cers.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  eat  of  the  fruit 
of  one's  toil,  if  it  be  nothing  more  than 
a  head  of  lettuce  or  an  ear  of  corn. 
One  cultivates  a  lawn  even  with  great 
satisfaction;  for  there  is  nothing  more 
beautiful  than  grass  and  turf  in  our  lati 
tude.  The  tropics  may  have  their  de 
lights;  but  they  have  not  turf:  and  the 
world  without  turf  is  -  a  dreary  desert. 
The  original  garden  of  Eden  could  not 
have  had  such  turf  as  one  sees  in  Eng- 


4  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

land.  The  Teutonic  races  all  love  turf: 
they  emigrate  in  the  line  of  its  growth. 
To  dig  in  the  mellow  soil  —  to  dig 
moderately,  for  all  pleasure  should  be 
taken  sparingly  —  is  a  great  thing.  One 
gets  strength  out  of  the  ground  as  often 
as  one  really  touches  it  with  a  hoe. 
Antceus  (this  is  a  classical  article)  was  no 
doubt  an  agriculturist ;  and  such  a  prize 
fighter  as  Hercules  couldn't  do  any  thing 
with  him  till  he  got  him  to  lay  down  his 
spade,  and  quit  the  soil.  It  is  not  simply 
beets  and  potatoes  and  corn  and  string- 
beans  that  one  raises  in  his  well-hoed 
garden :  it  is  the  average  of  human  life. 
There  is  life  in  the  ground ;  it  goes  into 
the  seeds  ;  and  it  also,  when  it  is  stirred 
up,  goes  into  the  man  who  stirs  it.  The 
hot  sun  on  his  back  as  he  bends  to 
his  shovel  and  hoe,  or  contemplatively 
rakes  the  warm  and  fragrant  loam,  is 
better  than  much  medicine.  The  buds 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  O 

are  coming  out  on  the  bushes  round 
about ;  the  blossoms  of  the  fruit-trees  be 
gin  to  show ;  the  blood  is  running  up  the 
grape-vines  in  streams;  you  can  smell 
the  wild -flowers  on  the  near  bank ;  and 
the  birds  are  flying  and  glancing  and 
singing  everywhere.  To  the  open  kitch 
en-door  conies  the  busy  housewife  to 
shake  a  white  something,  and  stands  a 
moment  to  look,  quite  transfixed  by  the 
delightful  sights  and  sounds.  Hoeing  in 
the  garden  on  a  bright,  soft  May  day, 
when  you  are  not  obliged  to,  is  nearly 
equal  to  the  delight  of  going  trouting. 

Blessed  be  agriculture  !  if  one  does  not 
have  too  much  of  it.  All  literature  is 
fragrant  with  it,  in  a  gentlemanly  way. 
At  the  foot  of  the  charming  olive-covered 
hills  of  Tivoli,  Horace  (not  he  of  Chap- 
paqua)  had  a  sunny  farm :  it  was  in 
sight  of  Hadrian's  villa,  who  did  land 
scape-gardening  on  an  extensive  scale, 


6  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

and  probably  did  not  get  half  as  much 
comfort  out  of  it  as  Horace  did  from  liis 
more  simply-tilled  acres.  We  trust  that 
Horace  did  a  little  hoeing  and  farming 
himself,  and  that  his  verse  is  not  all  fraud 
ulent  sentiment.  In  order  to  enjoy 
agriculture,  you  do  not  want  too  much 
of  it,  and  you  want  to  be  poor  enough 
to  have  a  little  inducement  to  work  mod 
erately  yourself.  Hoe  while  it  is  spring, 
and  enjoy  the  best  anticipations.  It  is 
not  much  matter  if  things  do  not  turn 
out  well. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN. 


WHAT  I  KNOW  ABOUT  GAEDENING. 

FIRST    WEEK. 

TTNDER  this  modest  title,  I  purpose 
S^  to  write  a  series  of  papers,  some  of 
which  will  be  like  many  papers  of  gar 
den-seeds,  with  nothing  vital  in  them,  on 
the  subject  of  gardening;  holding  that 
no  man  has  any  right  to  keep  valuable 
knowledge  to  himself,  and  hoping  that 
those  who  come  after  me,  except  tax- 
gatherers  and  that  sort  of  person,  will 
find  profit  in  the  perusal  of  my  experi 
ence.  As  my  knowledge  is  constantly 
increasing,  there  is  likely  to  be  no  end 
to  these  papers.  They  will  pursue  no 
orderly  system  of  agriculture  or  horti 
culture,  but  range  from  topic  to  topic, 


8  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

according  to  the  weather  and  the  prog 
ress  of  the  weeds,  which  may  drive  me 
from  one  corner  of  the  garden  to  the 
other. 

The  principal  value  of  a  private  gar 
den  is  not  understood.  It  is  not  to  give 
the  possessor  vegetables  and  fruit  (that 
can  be  better  and  cheaper  done  by  the 
market-gardeners),  but  to  teach  him  pa 
tience  and  philosophy,  and  the  higher  vir 
tues, —  hope  deferred,  and  expectations 
blighted,  leading  directly  to  resignation, 
and  sometimes  to  -alienation.  The  gar 
den  thus  becomes  a  moral  agent,  a  test 
of  character,  as  it  was  in  the  beginning. 
I  shall  keep  this  central  truth  in  mind 
in  these  articles.  I  mean  to  have  a 
moral  garden,  if  it  is  not  a  productive 
one,  —  one  that  shall  teach,  0  my 
brothers  !  0  my  sisters !  the  great  les- 
Bons  of  life. 

The  first  pleasant  thing  about  a  gar- 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  9 

den  in  this  latitude  is,  that  you  never 
know  when  to  set  it  going.  If  you  want 
any  thing  to  come  to  maturity  early, 
you  must  start  it  in  a  hot-house.  If  you 
put  it  out  early,  the  chances  are  all  in 
favor  of  getting  it  nipped  with  frost ;  for 
the  thermometer  will  be  90°  one  day, 
and  go  below  32°  the  night  of  the  day 
following.  And,  if  you  do  not  set  out 
plants  or  sow  seeds  early,  you  fret  con 
tinually  ;  knowing  that  your  vegetables 
will  be  late,  and  that,  while  Jones  has 
early  peas,  you  will  be  watching  your 
slow-forming  pods.  This  keeps  you  in  a 
state  of  mind.  When  you  have  planted 
any  thing  early,  you  are  doubtful  whether 
to  desire  to  see  it  above  ground,  or  not. 
If  a  hot  day  comeSj  you  long  to  see  the 
young  plants ;  but,  when  a  cold  north 
wind  brings  frost,  you  tremble  lest  the 
seeds  have  burst  their  bands.  Your 
spring  is  passed  in  anxious  doubts  and 


10  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

fears,  which  are  usually  realized ;  and  so 
a  great  moral  discipline  is  worked  out 
for  you. 

Now,  there  is  my  corn,  two  or  three 
inches  high  this  ,18th  of  May,  and  ap 
parently  having  no  fear  of  a  frost.  I 
was  hoeing  it  this  morning  for  the  first 
time,  —  it  is  not  well  usually  to  hoe  corn 
until  about  the  18th  of  May,  —  when 
Polly  came  out  to  look  at  the  Lima 
beans.  She  seemed  to  think  the  poles 
had  come  up  beautifully.  I  thought 
they  did  look  well :  they  are  a  fine  set 
of  poles,  large  and  well  grown,  and  stand 
straight.  They  were  inexpensive  too. 
The  cheapness  came  about  from  my  cut- 
ing  them  on  another  man's  land,  and  he 
did  not  know  it.  I  have  not  examined 
this  transaction  in  the  moral  light  of 
gardening ;  but  I  know  people  in  this 
country  take  great  liberties  at  the  polls. 
Polly  noticed  that  the  beans  had  not 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  11 

themselves  come  up  in  any  proper  sense, 
but  that  the  dirt  had  got  off  from  them, 
leaving  them  uncovered.  She  thought 
it  would  be  well  to  sprinkle  a  slight  layer 
of  dirt  over  them ;  and  I,  indulgently, 
consented.  It  occurred  to  me,  when  she 
had  gone,  that  beans  always  come  up 
that  way,  —  wrong  end  first ;  and  that 
what  they  wanted  was  light,  and  not 
dirt. 

Observation  :  Woman  always  did,  from 
the  first,  make  a  muss  in  a  garden. 

I  inherited  with  my  garden  a  large 
patch  of  raspberries.  Splendid  berry 
the  raspberry,  when  the  strawberry  has 
gone.  This  patch  has  grown  into  such  a 
defiant  attitude,  that  you  could  not  get 
within  several  feet  of  it.  Its  stalks  were 
enormous  in  size,  and  cast  out  long, 
prickly,  arms  in  all  directions ;  but  the 
bushes  were  pretty  much  all  dead.  I 
have  walked  into  them  a  good  deal  with 


12  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

a  pruning-knife  ;  but  it  is  very  much  like 
fighting  original  sin.  The  variety  is  one 
that  I  can  recommend.  I  think  it  is  called 
Brinckley's  Orange.  It  is  exceedingly 
prolific,  and  has  enormous  stalks.  The 
fruit  is  also  said  to  be  good;  but  that 
does  not  matter  so  much,  as  the  plant 
does  not  often  bear  in  this  region.  The 
stalks  seem  to  be  biennial  institutions  ; 
and  as  they  get  about  their  growth  one 
year,  and  bear  the  next  year,  and  then 
die,  and  the  winters  here  nearly  always 
kill  them,  unless  you  take  them  into  the 
house  (which  is  inconvenient  if  you  have 
a  family  of  small  children),  it  is  very  dif 
ficult  to  induce  the  plant  to  flower  and 
fruit.  This  is  the  greatest  objection 
there  is  to  this  sort  of  raspberry.  I 
think  of  keeping  these  for  discipline,  and 
setting  out  some  others,  more  hardy 
sorts,  for  fruit. 


.5v: 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  13 


SECOND   WEEK. 

"1VTEXT  to  deciding  when  to  start 
^-^  your  garden,  the  most  important 
matter  is,  what  to  put  in  it.  It  is  diffi 
cult  to  decide  what  to  order  for  dinner 
on  a  given  day :  how  much  more  op 
pressive  is  it  to  order  in  a  lump  an  end 
less  vista  of  dinners,  so  to  speak !  For, 
unless  your  garden  is  a  boundless  prairie 
(and  mine  seems  to  me  to  be  that  when 
I  hoe  it  on  hot  days),  you  must  make  a 
selection,  from  the  great  variety  of  vege 
tables,  of  those  you  will  raise  in  it ;  and 
you  feel  rather  bound  to  supply  your 
own  table  from  your  own  garden,  and  to 
eat  only  as  you  have  sown. 

I  hold  that  no  man  has  a  right  (what 
ever  his  sex,  of  course)  to  have  a-  gar- 


14  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

den  to  his  own  selfish  uses.  He  ought 
not  to  please  himself,  but  every  man  to 
please  his  neighbor.  I  tried  to  have  a 
garden  that  would  give  general  moral 
satisfaction.  It  seemed  to  me  that  no 
body  could  object  to  potatoes  (a  most 
useful  vegetable) ;  and  I  began  to  plant 
them  freely.  But  there  was  a  chorus  of 
protest  against  them.  "You  don't  want 
to  take  up  your  ground  with  potatoes/' 
the  neighbors  said  :  "  you  can  buy  pota 
toes  "  (the  very  thing  I  wanted  to  avoid 
doing  is  buying  things).  "What  you 
want  is  the  perishable  things  that  you 
cannot  get  fresh  in  the  market." — "But 
what  kind  of  perishable  things?"  Ahor- 
ticulturalist  of  eminence  wanted  me  to 
sow  lines  of  strawberries  and  raspberries 
right  over  where  I  had  put  my  potatoes 
in  drills.  I  had  about  five  hundred  straw 
berry-plants  in  another  part  of  my  gar 
den  ;  but  this  fruit-fanatic  wanted  me  to 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  15 

turn  my  whole  patch  into  vines  and  run 
ners.  I  suppose  I  could  raise  strawber 
ries  enough  for  all  my  neighbors ;  and 
perhaps  I  ought  to  do  it.  I  had  a  little 
space  prepared  for  melons, — musk-mel- 
oiis, — which  I  showed  to  an  experienced 
friend.  "  You  are  not  going  to  waste 
your  ground  on  musk-melons?"  he  asked. 
"  They  rarely  ripen  in  this  climate  thor 
oughly,  before  frost."  He  had  tried  for 
years  without  luck.  I  resolved  to  not  go 
into  such  a  foolish  experiment.  But,  the 
next  day,  another  neighbor  happened  in. 
"  Ah  !  I  see  you  are  going  to  have  mel 
ons.  My  family  would  rather  give  up 
any  thing  else  in  the  garden  than  musk- 
melons, — of  the  nutmeg  variety.  They 
are  the  most  grateful  things  we  have  on 
the  table."  So  there  it -was.  There  was 
no  compromise :  it  was  melons,  or  no 
melons,  and  somebody  offended  in  any 
case.  I  half  resolved  to  plant  them  a 


16  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

little  late,  so  that  they  would;  and  they 
wouldn't.  But  I  had  the  same  difficulty 
about  string-beans  (which  I  detest),  and 
squash  (which  I  tolerate),  and  parsnips, 
and  the  whole  round  of  green  things. 

I  have  pretty  much  come  to  the  con 
clusion,  that  you  have  got  to  put  your 
foot  down  in  gardening.  If  I  had  actu 
ally  taken  counsel  of  my  friends,  I  should 
not  have  had  a  thing  growing  in  the 
garden  to-day  but  weeds.  And  besides, 
while  you  are  waiting,  Nature  does  not 
wait.  Her  mind  is  made  up.  She 
knows  just  what  she  will  raise  ;  and  she 
has  an  infinite  variety  of  early  and  late. 
The  most  humiliating  thing  to  me  about 
a  garden  is  the  lesson  it  teaches  of  the 
inferiority  of  man.  Nature  is  prompt, 
decided,  inexhaustible.  She  thrusts  up 
her  plants  with  a  vigor  and  freedom  that 
I  admire ;  and,  the  more  worthless  the 
plant,  the  more  rapid  and  splendid  its 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  17 

growth.  She  is  at  it  early  and  late,  and 
all  night ;  never  tiring,  nor  showing  the 
least  sign  of  exhaustion. 

"  Eternal .  gardening  is  the  price  of 
liberty/'  is  a  motto  that  I  should  put 
over  the  gateway  of  my  garden,  if  I 
had  a  gate.  And  yet  it  is  not  wholly 
true ;  for  there  is  no  liberty  in  gar 
dening.  The  man  who  undertakes  a 
garden  is  relentlessly  pursued.  He 
felicitates  himself,  that,  when  he  gets  it 
once  planted,  he  will  have  a  season  of 
rest  and  of  enjoyment  in  the  sprouting 
and  growing  of  his  seeds.  It  is  a  green 
anticipation.  He  has  planted  a  seed 
that  will  keep  him  awake  nights ;  drive 
rest  from  his  bones,  and  sleep  from  his 
pillow.  Hardly  is  the  garden  planted, 
when  he  must  begin  to  hoe  it.  The 
weeds  have  sprung  up  all  6ver  it  in 
a  night.  They  shine  and  wave  in 
redundant  life.  The  docks  have  almost 


18  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

gone  to  seed ;  and  their  roots  go  deeper 
than  conscience.  Talk  about  the  Lon 
don  Docks  ! —  the  roots  of  these  are  like 
the  sources  of  the  Aryan  .  race.  And 
the  weeds  are  not  all.  I  awake  in  the 
morning  (and  a  thriving  garden  will 
wake  a  person  up  two  hours  before  he 
ought  to  be  out  of  bed),  and  think  of 
the  tomato-plants, —  the  leaves  like  fine 
lace-work,  owing  to  black  bugs  that  skip 
around,  and  can't  be  caught.  Some 
body  ought  to  get  up  before  the  dew 
is  off,  (why  don't  the  dew  stay  on  till 
after  a  reasonable  breakfast?)  and 
sprinkle  soot  on  the  leaves.  I  wonder 
if  it  is  I.  Soot  is  so  much  blacker  than 
the  bugs,  that  they  are  disgusted,  and 
go  away.  You  can't  get  up  too  early, 
if  you  have  a  garden.  You  must  be 
early  due,  yourself,  if  you  get  ahead 
of  the  bugs.  I  think,  that,  on  the 
whole,  it  would  be  best  to  sit  up  all 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN.  19 

night,  and  sleep  clay-times.  Things 
appear  to  go  on  in  the  night  in  the 
garden  uncommonly.  It  would  be  less 
trouble  to  stay  up  than  it  is  to  get  up 
30  early. 

I  have  been  setting  out  some  new 
raspberries,  two  sorts, —  a  silver  and  a 
gold  color.  How  fine  they  will  look  on 
the  table  next  year  in  a  cut-glass  dish, 
the  cream  being  in  a  ditto  pitcher !  I 
set  them  four  and  five  feet  apart.  I  set 
my  strawberries  pretty  well  apart  also. 
The  reason  is,  to  give  room  for  the  cows 
to  run  through  when  they  break  into 
the  garden, —  as  they  do  sometimes.  A 
cow  needs  a  broader  track  than  a  loco 
motive  ;  and  she  generally  makes  one. 
I  am  sometimes  astonished  to  see  how 
big  a  space  in  a  flower-bed  her  foot  will 
cover.  The  raspberries  are  called  Doo- 
little  and  Golden  Cap.  I  don't  like  the 
name  of  the  first  variety,  and,  if  they 


20  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

do  much,  shall  change  it  to  Silver  Top. 
You  never  can  tell  what  a  thing  named 
Doolittle  will  do.  The  one  in  the 
Senate  changed  color,  and  got  sour. 
They  ripen  badly,  —  either  mildew,  or 
rot  on  the  bush.  They  are  apt  to  John- 
sonize,  —  rot  on  the  stem.  I  shall  watch 
the  Doolittles. 


v/x  >-/  '/K  j 

-V? 

;^> 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  21 


THIRD    WEEK. 

T  BELIEVE  that  I  have  found,  if  not 
-T-  original  sin,  at  least  vegetable  total 
depravity  in  my  garden;  and  it  was 
there  before  I  went  into  it.  It  is  the 
bunch,  or  joint,  or  snake-grass,  —  what 
ever  it  is  called.  As  I  do  not  know  the 
names  of  all  the  weeds  and  plants,  I 
have  to  do  as  Adam  did  in  his  garden,  — 
name  things  as  I  find  them.  This  grass 
has  a  slender,  beautiful  stalk :  and  when 
you  cut  it  down,  or  pull  up  a  long  root 
of  it,  you  fancy  it  is  got  rid  of;  but,  in 
a  day  or  two,  it  will  come  up  in  the  same 
spot  in  half  a  dozen  vigorous  blades. 
Cutting  down  and  pulling  up  is  what 
it  thrives  on.  Extermination  rather 
helps  it.  If  you  follow  a  slender  white 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

root,  it  will  be  found  to  run  under  the 
ground  until  it  meets  another  slender 
white  root;  and  you  will  soon  unearth 
a  network  of  them,  with  a  knot  some 
where,  sending  out  dozens  of  sharp- 
pointed,  healthy  shoots,  every  joint 
prepared  to  be  an  independent  life  and 
plant.  The  only  way  to  deal  with  it 
is  to  take  one  part  hoe  and  two  parts 
fingers,  and  carefully  dig  it  out,  not 
leaving  a  joint  anywhere.  It  will  take 
a  little  time,  say  all  summer,  to  dig 
out  thoroughly  a  small  patch;  but  if 
you  once  dig  it  out,  and  keep  it  out, 
you  will  have  no  further  trouble. 

I  have  said  it  was  total  depravity. 
Here  it  is.  If  you  attempt  to  pull  up 
and  root  out  any  sin  in  you,  which 
shows  on  the  surface,  —  if  it  does  not 
show,  you  do  not  care  for  it, —  you  may 
have  noticed  how  it  runs  into  an  interior 
network  of  sins,  and  an  ever-sprouting 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  23 

branch  of  them  roots  somewhere  ;  and 
that  you  cannot  pull  out  one  without 
making  a  general  internal  disturbance, 
and  rooting  up  your  whole  being.  I 
suppose  it  is  less  trouble  to  quietly  cut 
them  off  at  the  top,  —  say  once  a  week, 
on  Sunday,  when  you  put  on  your 
religious  clothes  and  face,  —  so  that  no 
one  will  see  them,  and  not  try  to  eradi 
cate  the  network  within. 

Eemarlc. — This  moral  vegetable  figure 
is  at  the  service  of  any  clergyman  who 
will  have  the  manliness  to  come  forward 
and  help  me  at  a  day's  hoeing  on  my 
potatoes.  None  but  the  orthodox  need 
apply. 

I,  however,  believe  in  the  intellectual, 
if  not  the  moral,  qualities  of  vegetables, 
and  especially  weeds.  There  was  a 
worthless  vine  that  (or  who)  started  up 
about  midway  between  a  grape-trellis 
and  a  row  of  bean-poles,  some  three 


24  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

feet  from  each,  but  a  little  nearer  the 
trellis.  When  it  came  out  of  the  ground, 
it  looked  around  to  see  what  it  should 
do.  The  trellis  was  already  occupied. 
The  bean-pole  was  empty.  There  was 
'evidently  a  little  the  best  chance  of 
light,  air,  and  sole  proprietorship  on  the 
pole.  And  the  vine  started  for  the 
pole,  and  began  to. climb  it  with  deter 
mination.  Here  was  as  distinct  an  act 
of  choice,  of  reason,  as  a  boy  exercises 
when  he  goes  into  a  forest,  and,  looking 
about,  decides  which  tree  he  will  climb. 
And,  besides,  how  did  the  vine  know 
enough  to  travel  in  exactly  the  right 
direction,  three  feet,  to  find  what  it 
wanted  ?  This  is  intellect.  The  weeds, 
on  the  other  hand,  have  hateful  moral 
qualities.  To  cut  down  a  weed  is, 
therefore,  to  do  a  moral  action.  I  feel 
as  if  I  were  destroying  sin.  My  hoe 
becomes  an  instrument  of  retributive 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  25 

justice.  I  am  an  apostle  of  Nature. 
This  view  of  the  matter  lends  a  dignity 
to  the  art  of  hoeing  which  nothing  else 
does,  and  lifts  it  into  the  region  of 
ethics.  Hoeing  becomes,  not  a  pastime, 
but  a  duty.  And  you  get  to  regard  it 
so,  as  the  days  and  the  weeds  lengthen. 

Observation.  —  Nevertheless,  what  a 
man  needs  in  gardening  is  a  cast-iron 
back,  with  a  hinge  in  it.  The  hoe  is 
an  ingenious  instrument,  calculated  to 
call  out  a  great  deal  of  strength  at  a 
great  disadvantage. 

The  striped  bug  has  come,  the  saddest 
of  the  year.  He  is  a  moral  double- 
ender,  iron-clad  at  that.  He  is  un 
pleasant  in  two  ways.  He  burrows  in 
the  ground  so  that  you  cannot  find 
him,  and  he  flies  away  so  that  you 
cannot  catch  him.  He  is  rather  hand 
some,  as  bugs  go,  but  utterly  dastardly, 
in  that  he  gnaws  the  stem  of  the  plant 


26  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

close  to  the  ground,  and  ruins  it  without 
any  apparent  advantage  to  himself.  I 
find  him  on  the  hills  of  cucumbers 
(perhaps  it  will  be  a  cholera-year,  and 
we  shall  not  want  any),  the  squashes 
(small  loss),  and  the  melons  (which 
never  ripen).  The  best  way  to  deal 
with  the  striped  bug  is  to  sit  down  by 
the  hills,  and  patiently  watch  for  him. 
If  you  are  spry,  you  can  annoy  him. 
This,  however,  takes  time.  It  takes 
all  day  and  part  of  the  night.  For  he 
flyeth  in  darkness,  and  wasteth  at  noon- 
flay.  If  you  get  up  before  the  dew  is 
off  the  plants, —  it  goes  off  very  early, — 
you  can  sprinkle  soot  on  the  plant 
(soot  is  my  panacea :  if  I  can  get  the 
disease  of  a  plant  reduced  to  the  neces 
sity  of  soot,  I  am  all  right) ;  and  soot 
is  unpleasant  to  the  bug.  But  the  best 
thing  to  do  is  to  set  a  toad  to  catch 
the  bugs.  The  toad  at  once  establishes 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  27 

the  most  intimate  relations  with  the 
bug.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  see  such  unity 
among  the  lower  animals.  The  diffi 
culty  is  to  make  the  toad  stay,  and 
watch  the  hill.  If  you  know  your  toad, 
it  is  all  right.  If  you  do  not,  you  must 
build  a  tight  fence  round  the  plants, 
which  the  toad  cannot  jump  over.  This, 
however,  introduces  a  new  element.  I 
find  that  I  have  a  zoological  garden  on 
my  hands.  It  is  an  unexpected  result 
of  my  little  enterprise,  which  never 
aspired  to  the  completeness  of  the  Paris 
"  Jardin  des  Plantes." 


28  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 


FOURTH    WEEK. 

ETHODOXY  ia  at  a  low  ebb.  Only 
two  clergymen  accepted  my  offer 
to  come  and  help  hoe  my  potatoes  for 
the  privilege  of  using  my  vegetable 
total-depravity  figure  about  the  snake- 
grass,  or  quack-grass  as  some  call  it; 
and  those  two  did  not  bring  hoes. 
There  seems  to  be  a  lack  of  disposition 
to  hoe  among  our  educated  clergy.  I 
am  bound  to  say  that  these  two,  how 
ever,  sat  and  watched  my  vigorous  com 
bats  with  the  weeds,  and  talked  most 
beautifully  about  the  application  of  the 
snake-grass  figure.  As,  for  instance, 
when  a  fault  or  sin  showed  on  the  surface 
of  a  man,  whether  if  you  dug  down,  you 
would  find  that  it  ran  back  and  into  the 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  29 

original  organic  bunch  of  original  sin 
within  the  man.  The  only  other  clergy 
man  who  came  was  from  out  of  town,  —  a 
half  Universalist,  who  said  he  wouldn't 
give  twenty  cents  for  my  figure.  He 
said  that  the  snake-grass  was  not  in  my 
garden  originally,  that  it  sneaked  in 
under  the  sod,  and  that  it  could  be  en 
tirely  rooted  out  with  industry  and  pa 
tience.  I  asked  the  Universalist-inclined 
man  to  take  my  hoe  and  try  it ;  but  he 
said  he  hadn't  time,  and  went  away. 

But,  jubilate,  I  have  got  my  garden 
all  hoed  the  first  time !  I  feel  as  if  I 
had  put  down  the  rebellion.  Only  there 
are  guerillas  left  here  and  there,  about 
the  borders  and  in  corners,  unsub 
dued, —  Forrest  docks,  and  Quantrell 
grass,  and  Beauregard  pig-weeds.  This 
first  hoeing  is  a '  gigantic  task :  it  is 
your  first  trial  of  strength  with  the 
never-sleeping  forces  of  Nature.  Sev- 


30  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

eral  times,  in  its  progress,  I  was  tempted 
to  do  as  Adam  did,  who  abandoned  his 
garden  on  account  of  the  weeds.  (How 
much  my  mind  seems  to  run  upon 
Adam,  as  if  there  had  been  only 
two  really  moral  gardens,  —  Adam's  and 
mine !)  The  only  drawback  to  my  re 
joicing  over  the  finishing  of  the  first 
hoeing  is,  that  the  garden  now  wants 
hoeing. the  second  time.  I  suppose,  if 
my  garden  were  planted  in  a  perfect 
circle,  and  I  started  round  it  with  a 
hoe,  I  should  never  see  an  opportunity 
to  rest.  The  fact  is,-  that  gardening  is 
the  old  fable  of  perpetual  labor;  and 
I,  for  one,  can  never  forgive  Adam  Sisy 
phus,  or  whoever  it  was,  who  let  in  the 
roots  of  discord.  I  had  pictured  my 
self  sitting  at  eve,  with  my  family,  in 
the  shade  of  twilight,  contemplating  a 
garden  hoed.  Alas  !  it  is  a  dream  not  to 
be  realized  in  this  world. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  31 

My  mind  has  been  turned  to  the  sub 
ject  of  fruit  and  shade  trees  in  a  gar 
den.  There  are  those  who  say  that 
trees  shade  the  garden  too  much,  and 
interfere  with  the  growth  of  the  vege 
tables.  There  may  be  something  in  this : 
but  when  I  go  down  the  potato  rows,  the 
rays  of  the  sun  glancing  upon  my  shining 
blade,  the  sweat  pouring  from  my  face, 
I  should  be  grateful  for  shade.  What  is 
a  garden  for  ?  The  pleasure  of  man.  I 
should  take  much  more  pleasure  in  a 
shady  garden,  ^m  I  to  be  sacrificed, 
broiled,  roasted,  for-  the  sake  of  the  in 
creased  vigor  of  a  few  vegetables  ?  The 
thing  is  perfectly  absurd.  If  I  were 
rich,  I  think  I  would  have  my  garden 
covered  with  an  awning,  so  that  it 
would  be  comfortable  to  work  in  it.  It 
might  roll  up  and  be  removable,  as  the 
great  awning  of  the  Roman  Coliseum 
was,  —  not  like  the  Boston  one,  which 


32  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

went  off  in  a  high  wind.  Another  very 
good  way  to  do,  and  probably  not  so  ex 
pensive  as  the  awning,  would  be  to  have 
four,  persons  of  foreign  birth  carry  a 
sort  of  canopy  over  you  as  you  hoed. 
And  there  might  be  a  person  at  eaefy 
end  of  the  row  with  some  cool  and  re 
freshing  drink.  Agriculture  is  still  in  a 
very  barbarous  stage.  I  hope  to  live 
yet  to  see  the  day  when  I  can  do  my 
gardening,  as  tragedy  is  done,  to  slow 
and  soothing  music,  and  attended  by 
some  of  the  comforts  I  have  named. 
These  things  come  so  forcibly  into  my 
mind  sometimes  as  I  work,  that  perhaps, 
when  a  wandering  breeze  lifts  my  straw 
hat,  or  a  bird  lights  on  a  near  currant- 
bush,  and  shakes  out  a  full-throated 
summer  song,  I  almost  expect  to  find 
the  cooling  drink  and  the  hospitable  en 
tertainment  at  the  end  of  the  row.  But 
I  never  do.  There  is  nothing  to  be 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  33 

done  but  to  turn  round,  and  hoe  back 
to  the  other  end. 

Speaking  of  those  yellow  squash- 
bugs,  I  think  I  disheartened  them  by 
covering  the  plants  so  deep  with  soot 
and  wood-ashes  that  they  could  not  find 
them ;  and  I  am  in  doubt  if  I  shall  ever 
see  the  plants  again.  But  I  have  heard 
of  another  defence  against  the  bugs. 
Put  a  fine  wire-screen  over  each  hill, 
which  will  keep  out  the  bugs  and  admit 
the  rain.  I  should  say  that  these 
screens  would  not  cost  much  more  than 
the  melons  you  would  be  likely  to  get 
from  the  vines  if  you  bought  them ; 
but  then  think  of  the  moral  satisfaction 
of  watching  the  bugs  hovering  over  the 
screen,  seeing,  but  unable  to  reach  the 
tender  plants  within.  That  is  worth 
paying  for. 

I  left  my  own  garden  yesterday,  and 
went  over  to  where  Polly  was  getting 


34  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

the  weeds  out  of  one  of  her  flower 
beds.  She  was  working  away  at  the 
bed  with  a  little  hoe.  Whether  women 
ought  to  have  the  ballot  or  not  (and  I 
have  a  decided  opinion  on  that  point, 
which  I  should  here  plainly  give,  did  I 
not  fear  that  it  would  injure  my  agricul 
tural  influence),  I  am  compelled  to  say 
that  this  was  rather  helpless  hoeing. 
It  was  patient,  conscientious,  even 
pathetic  hoeing ;  but  it  was  neither 
effective  nor  finished.  When  com 
pleted,  the  bed  looked  somewhat  as  if 
a  hen  had  scratched  it :  there  was  that 
touching  unevenness  about  it.  I  think 
no  one  could  look  at  it  and  not  be 
affected.  To  be  sure,  Polly  smoothed  it 
off  with  a  rake,  and  asked  me  if  it 
wasn't  nice  ;  and  I  said  it  was.  It  was 
not  a  favorable  time  for  me  to  explain 
the  difference  between  puttering  hoe 
ing,  and  the  broad,  free  sweep  of  the 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  35 

instrument,  which  kills  the  weeds, 
spares  the  plants,  and  loosens  the  soil 
without  leaving  it  in  holes  and  hills. 
But,  after  all,  as  life  is  constituted,  I 
think  more  of  Polly's  honest  and 
anxious  care  of  her  plants  than  of  the 
most  finished  gardening  in  the  world. 


36  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 


FIFTH    WEEK. 

~T~  LEFT  my  garden  for  a  week,  just  at 
•*•  the  close  of  the  dry  spell.  A 
season  of  rain  immediately  set  in,  and 
when  I  returned  the  transformation  was 
wonderful.  In  one  week,  every  vegeta 
ble  had  fairly  jumped  forward.  The 
tomatoes  which  I  left  slender  plants, 
eaten  of  bugs  and  debating  whether 
they  would  go  backward  or  forward, 
had  become  stout  and  lusty,  with  thick 
stems  and  dark  leaves,  and  some  of 
them  had  blossomed.  The  corn  waved 
like  that  which  grows  so  rank  out  of 
the  French-English  mixture  at  Water 
loo.  The  squashes  —  I  will  not  speak 
of  the  squashes.  The  most  remarkable 
growth  was  the  asparagus.  There  was 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  37 

not  a  spear  above  ground  when  I  went 
away ;  and  now  it  had  sprung  up,  and 
gone  to  seed,  and  there  were  stalks 
higher  than  my  head.  I  am  entirely 
aware  of  the  value  of  words,  and  of 
moral  obligations.  When  I  say  that 
the  asparagus  had  grown  six  feet  in 
seven  days,  I  expect  and  wish  to  be 
believed.  I  am  a  little  particular  about 
the  statement ;  for,  if  there  is  any  prize 
offered  for  asparagus  at  the  next  agri 
cultural  fair,  I  wish  to  compete,  —  speed 
to  govern.  What  I  claim  is  the  fastest 
asparagus.  As  for  eating  purposes,  I 
have  seen  better.  A  neighbor  of  mine, 
who  looked  in  at  the  growth  of  the 
bed,  said,  "  Well,  he'd  be  -  - : "  but  I 
told  him  there  was  no  use  of  affirming 
now;  he  might  keep  his  oath  till  ] 
wanted  it  on  the  asparagus  affidavit. 
In  order  to  have  this  sort  of  asparagus, 
you  want  to  manure  heavily  in  the 


38  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN 

early  spring,  fork  it  in,  and  top-dress 
(that  sounds  technical)  with  a  thick 
layer  of  chloride  of  sodium :  if  you 
cannot  get  that,  common  salt  will  do, 
and  the  neighbors  will  never  notice 
whether  it  is  the  orthodox  Na.  Cl.  58.5, 
or  not. 

I  scarcely  dare  trust  myself  to  speak 
of  the  weeds.  They  grow  as  if  the  devil 
was  in  them.  I  know  a  lady,  a  member 
of  the  church,  and  a  very  good  sort 
of  woman,  considering  the  subject 
condition  of  that  class,  who  says  that 
the  weeds  work  on  her  to  that  extent, 
that,  in  going  through  her  garden,  she 
has  the  greatest  difficulty  in  keeping 
the  ten  commandments  in  any  thing  like 
an  unfractured  condition.  I  asked  her 
which  one  ?  but  she  said,  all  of  them : 
one  felt  like  breaking  the  whole  lot. 
The  sort  of  weed  which  I  most  hate 
(if  I  can  be  said  to  hate  any  thing  which 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  39 

grows  in  my  own  garden)  is  the  "  pus- 
ley/'  a  fat,  ground-clinging,  spreading, 
greasy  thing,  and  the  most  propagations 
(it  is  not  my  fault  if  the  word  is  not 
in  the  dictionary)  plant  I  know.  I  saw 
a  Chinaman,  wrho  came  over  with  a 
returned  missionary,  and  pretended  to 
be  converted,  boil  a  lot  of  it  in  a  pot, 
stir  in  eggs,  and  mix  and  eat  it  with 
relish,  —  "Me  likee  he."  It  will  be  a 
good  thing  to  keep  the  Chinamen  on 
when  they  come  to  do  our  gardening. 
I  only  fear  they  will  cultivate  it  at  the 
expense  of  the  strawberries  and  melons. 
Who  can  say  that  other  weeds,  which 
we  despise,  may  not  be  the  favorite 
food  of  some  remote  people  or  tribe. 
We  ought  to  abate  our  conceit.  It  is 
possible  that  we  destroy  in  our  gardens 
that  \vhich  is  really  of  most  value  in 
some  other  place.  Perhaps,  in  like 
'manner,  our  faults  and  vices  are  virtues 


40  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

in. some  remote  planet.  I  cannot  see, 
however,  that  this  thought  is  of  the 
slightest  value  to  us  here,  any  more  than 
weeds  are. 

There  is  another  subject  which  is 
forced  upon  my  notice.  I  like  neigh 
bors,  and  I  like  chickens ;  but  I  do  not 
think  they  ought  to  be  united  near  a 
garden.  Neighbors'  hens  in  your  gar 
den  are  an  annoyance.  Even  if  they 
did  not  scratch  up  the  corn,  and  peck 
the  strawberries,  and  eat  the  tomatoes, 
it  is  not  pleasant  to  see  them  straddling 
about  in  their  jerkey,  high-stepping, 
speculative  manner,  picking  inquisitively 
here  and  there.  It  is  of  no  use  to  tell 
the  neighbor  that  his  hens  eat  your 
tomatoes :  it  makes  no  impression  on 
him,  for  the  tomatoes  are  not  his.  The 
best  way  is  to  casually  remark  to  him 
that  he  has  a  fine  lot  of  chickens,  pretty 
well  grown,  and  that  you  like  spring 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  41 

chickens  broiled.  He  will  take  them 
away  at  once.  The-  neighbors'  small 
children  are  also  out  of  place  in  your 
garden,  in  strawberry  and  currant  time. 
I  hope  I  appreciate  the  value  of  children. 
We  should  soon  come  to  nothing  without 
them,  though  the  Shakers  have  the  best 
gardens  in  the  world.  Without  them 
the  common  school  would  languish. 
But  the  problem  is,  what  to  do  with 
them  in  a  garden.  For  they  are  not 
good  to  eat,  and  there  is  a  law  against 
making  away  with  them.  The  law  is 
not  very  well  enforced,  it  is  true ;  for 
people  do  thin  them  out  with  constant 
dosing,  paregoric,  and  soothing-sirups, 
and  scanty  clothing.  But  I,  for  one, 
feel  that  it  would  not  be  right,  aside 
from  the  law,  to  take  the  life,  even  of 
the  smallest  child,  for  the  sake  of  a 
little  fruit,  more  or  less,  in  the  garden. 
I  may  be  wrong ;  but  these  are  my 


42  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

sentiments,  and  I  am  not  ashamed  of 
them.  When  we  come,  as  Bryant  says 
in  his  "  Iliad/'  to  leave  the  circus  of  this 
life,  and  join  that  innumerable  caravan 
which  moves,  it  will  be  some  satis 
faction  to  us,  that  we  have  never,  in 
the  way  of  gardening,  disposed  of  even 
the  humblest  child  unnecessarily.  My 
plan  would  be  to  put  them  into  Sunday 
schools  more  thoroughly,  and  to  give 
the  Sunday  schools  an  agricultural  turn ; 
teaching  the  children  the  sacredness 
of  neighbors'  vegetables.  I  think  that 
our  Sunday  schools  do  not  sufficiently 
impress  upon  children  the  danger,  from 
snakes  and  otherwise,  of  going  into  the 
neighbors'  gardens. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  43 


SIXTH  WEEK. 

SOMEBODY  has  sent  me  a  hew  sort 
of  hoe,  with  the  wish  that  I  should 
speak  favorably  of  it,  if  I  can  consist 
ently.  I  willingly  do  so,  but  with  the 
understanding  that  I  am  to  be  at  liberty 
to  speak  just  as  courteously  of  any  other 
hoe  which  I  may  receive.  If  I  under 
stand  religious  morals,  this  is  the  position 
of  the  religious  press  with  regard 
to  bitters  and  wringing-machines.  In 
some  cases,  the  responsibility  of  such 
a  recommendation  is  shifted  upon  the 
wife  of  the  editor  or  clergyman.  Polly 
says  she  is  entirely  willing  to  make  a 
certificate,  accompanied  with  an  affidavit, 
with  regard  to  this  hoe ;  but  her  habit 
of  sitting  about  the  garden-walk,  on 


44  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

an  inverted  flower-pot,  while  I  hoe,  some 
what  destroys  the  practical  value  of  her 
testimony. 

As  to  this  hoe,  I  do  not  mind  saying 
that  it  has  changed  my  view  of  the 
desirableness  and  value  of  human  life. 
It  has,  in  fact,  made  life  a  holiday  to 
me.  It  is  made  on  the  principle  that 
man  is  an  upright,  sensible,  reasonable 
being,  and  not  a  grovelling  wretch.  It 
does  away  with  the  necessity  of  the 
hinge  in  the  back.  The  handle  is  seven 
and  a  half  feet  long.  There  are  two 
narrow  blades,  sharp  on  both  edges, 
which  come  together  at  an  obtuse  angle 
in  front;  and  as  you  walk  along  with 
this  hoe  before  you,  pushing  and  pulling 
with  a  gentle  motion,  the  weeds  fall 
at  every  thrust  and  withdrawal,  and 
the  slaughter  is  immediate  and  wide 
spread.  When  I  got  this  hoe,  I  was 
troubled  with  sleepless  mornings,  pains 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GAItDEN.  45 

in  the  back,  kleptomania  with  regard  to 
new  weeders ;  when  I  went  into  my 
garden,  I  was  always  sure  to  see  some 
thing.  In  this  disordered  state  of  mind 
and  body,  I  got  this  hoe.  The  morning 
after  a  day  of  using  it,  I  slept  perfectly 
and  late.  I  regained  my  respect  for 
the  eighth  commandment.  After  two 
doses  of  the  hoe  in  the  garden,  the 
weeds  entirely  disappeared.  Trying  it 
a  third  morning,  I  was  obliged  to  throw 
it  over  the  fence  in  order  to  save  from 
destruction  the  green  things  that  ought 
to  grow  in  the  garden.  Of  course,  this 
is  figurative  language.  What  I  mean  is, 
that  the  •  fascination  of  using  this  hoe 
is  such,  that  you  are  sorely  tempted 
to  employ  it  upon  your  vegetables,  after 
the  weeds  are  laid  low,  and  must  hastily 
withdraw  it,  to  avoid  unpleasant  results. 
I  make  this  explanation,  because  I  in 
tend  to  put  nothing  into  these  agricul- 


46  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

tural  papers  that  will  not  bear  the 
strictest  scientific  investigation ;  nothing 
that  the  youngest  child  cannot  under 
stand  and  cry  for;  nothing  that  the 
oldest  and  wisest  men  will  not  need  to 
study  with  care. 

I  need  not  add,  that  the  care  of  a  gar 
den  with  this  hoe  becomes  the  merest 
pastime.  I  would  not  be  without  one 
for  a  single  night.  The  only  danger  is, 
that  you  may  rather  make  an  idol  of  the 
hoe,  and  somewhat  neglect  your  garden 
in  explaining  it,  and  fooling  about  with 
it.  I  almost  think,  that,  with  one  of 
these  in  the  hands  of  an  ordinary  day- 
laborer,  you  might  see  at  night  where 
he  had  been  working. 

Let  us  have  peas.  I  have  been  a 
zealous  advocate  of  the  birds.  I  have 
rejoiced  in  their  multiplication.  I  have 
endured  their  concerts  at  four  o'clock  in 
the  morning  without  a  murmur.  Let 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  47 

them  come,  I  said,  and  eat  the  worms, 
in  order  that  we,  later,  may  enjoy  the 
foliage  and  the  fruits  of  the  earth.  We 
have  a  cat,  a  magnificent  animal,  of  the 
sex  which  votes  (but  not  a  pole-cat),  — 
so  large  and  powerful,  that,  if  he  were  in 
the  army,  he  would  be  called  Long  Tom. 
He  is  a  cat  of  fine  disposition,  the  most 
irreproachable  morals  I  ever  saw  thrown 
away  in  a  cat,  and  a  splendid  hunter. 
He  spends  his  nights,  not  in  social  dissi 
pation,  but  in  gathering  in  rats,  mice, 
flying-squirrels,  and  also  birds.  When 
he  first  brought  me  a  bird,  I  told  him 
that  it  was  wrong,  and  tried  to  convince 
him,  while  he  was  eating  it,  that  he  was 
doing  wrong ;  for  he  is  a  reasonable 
cat,  and  understands  pretty  much  every 
thing  except  the  binomial  theorem  and 
the  time  down  the  cycloidal  arc.  But 
with  no  effect.  The  killing  of  birds 
went  on  to  my  great  regret  and  shame. 


48  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

The  other  day,  I  went  to  my  garden 
to  get  a  mess  of  peas.  I  had  seen,  the 
day  before,  that  they  were  just  ready  to 
pick.  How  I  had  lined  the  ground, 
planted,  hoed,  bushed  them  !  The 
bushes  were  very  fine,  — seven  feet  high, 
and  of  good  wood.  How  I  had  delight 
ed  in  the  growing,  the  blowing,  the 
podding  !  What  a  touching  thought  it 
was  that  they  had  all  podded  for  me ! 
When  I  went  to  pick  them,  I  found  the 
pods  all  split  open,  and  the  peas  gone. 
The  dear  little  birds,  who  are  so  fond 
of  the  strawberries,  had  eaten  them 
all.  Perhaps  there  were  left  as  many  as 
I  planted  :  I  did  not  count  them.  I 
made  a  rapid  estimate  of  the  cost  of 
the  seed,  the  interest  of  the  ground, 
the  price  of  labor,  the  value  of  the 
bushes,  the  anxiety  of  weeks  of  watch 
fulness.  I  looked  about  me  on  the  face 
of  Nature.  The  wind  blew  from  the 


MY  SUMMER  J7V  A  GARDEN.  49 

south  so  soft  and  treacherous  !  A  thrush 
sang  in  the  woods  so  deceitfully !  All 
Nature  seemed  fair.  But  who  was  to 
give  me  back  my  peas  ?  The  fowls  of 
the  air  have  peas ;  but  what  has  man  ? 

I  went  into  the  house.  I  called  Cal 
vin.  (That  is  the  name  of  our  cat, 
given  him  on  account  of  his  gravity, 
morality,  and  uprightness.  We  never 
familiarly  call  him  John.)  I  petted 
Calvin.  I  lavished  upon  him  an  enthu 
siastic  fondness.  I  told  him  that  he 
had  no  fault ;  that  the  one  action  that 
I  had  called  a  vice  was  an  heroic  exhi 
bition  of  regard  for  my  interests.  I 
bade  him  go  and  do  likewise  con 
tinually.  I  now  saw  how  much  better 
instinct  is  than  mere  unguided  reason. 
Calvin  knew.  If  he  had  put  his  opinion 
into  English  (instead  of  his  native  cat 
alogue),  it  would  have  been :  "  You 
need  not  teach  your  grandmother  to 


50  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

suck  eggs."  It  was  only  the  round  of 
Nature.  The  worms  eat  a  noxious 
something  in  the  ground.  The  birds 
eat  the  worms.  Calvin  eats  the  birds. 
We  eat  —  no,  we  do  not  eat  Calvin. 
There  the  chain  stops.  When  you 
ascend  the  scale  of  being,  and  come  to 
an  animal  that  is,  like  ourselves,  inedi 
ble,  you  have  arrived  at  a  result  where 
you  can  rest.  Let  us  respect  the  cat. 
He  completes  an  edible  chain. 

I  have  little  heart  to  discuss  methods 
of  raising  peas.  It  occurs  to  me  that  I 
can  have  an  iron  pea-bush,  a  sort  of 
trellis,  through  which  I  could  discharge 
electricity  at  frequent  intervals,  and 
electrify  the  birds  to  death  when  they 
alight ;  for  they  stand  upon  my  beau 
tiful  brush  in  order  to  pick  out  the  peas. 
An  apparatus  of  this  kind,  with  an 
operator,  would  cost,  however,  about  as 
much  as  the  peas.  A  neighbor  suggests, 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  51  - 

that  I  might  put  up  a  scarecrow  near  the 
vines,  which  would  keep  the  birds  away. 
I  am  doubtful  about  it :  the  birds  are 
too  much  accustomed  to  seeing  a  person 
in  poor  clothes  in  the  garden  to  care 
much  for  that.  Another*  neighbor 
suggests,  that  the  birds  do  not  open 
the  pods ;  that  a  sort  of  blast,  apt  to 
come  after  rain,  splits  the  pods,  and  the 
birds  then  eat  the  peas.  It  may  be  so. 
There  seems  to  be  complete  unity  of 
action  between  the  blast  and  the  birds. 
But  good  neighbors,  kind  friends,  I 
desire  that  you  will  not  increase,  by 
talk,  a  disappointment  which  you  cannot 
assuage. 


52  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 


SEVENTH  WEEK. 

A  GARDEN  is  an  awful  responsibil- 
-£-*-  ity.  You  never  know  what  you 
may  be  aiding  to  grow  in  it.  I  heard  a 
sermon,  not  long  ago,  in  which  the 
preacher  said  that  the  Christian,  at  the 
moment  of  his  becoming  one,  was  as 
perfect  a  Christian  as  he  would  be  if  he 
grew  to  be  an  archangel;  that  is,  that 
he  would  not  change  thereafter  at  all, 
but  only  develop.  I  do  not  know 
whether  this  is  good  theology,  or  not ; 
and  I  hesitate  to  support  it  by  an  illus 
tration  from  my  garden,  especially  as  I 
do  not  want  to  run  the  risk  of  propa 
gating  error,  and  I  do  not  care  to  give 
away  these  theological  comparisons  to 
clergymen  who  make  me  so  little  return 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  53 

in  the  way  of  labor.  But  I  find,  in  dis 
secting  a  pea-blossom,  that  hidden  in  the 
centre  of  it  is  a  perfect  miniature  pea- 
pod,  with  the  peas  all  in  it,  —  as  perfect 
a  pea-pod  as  it  will  ever  be ;  only  it  is 
as  tiny  as  a  chatelaine  ornament.  Maize 
and  some  other  things  show  the  same 
precocity.  This  confirmation  of  the 
theologic  theory  is  startling,  and  sets 
me  meditating  upon  the  moral  possibili 
ties  of  my  garden.  I  may  find  in  it  yet 
the  cosmic  egg. 

And,  speaking  of  moral  things,  I  am 
half  determined  to  petition  the  (Ecu 
menical  Council  to  issue  a  bull  of  ex 
communication  against  "pusley."  Of 
all  the  forms  which  "  error "  has  taken 
in  this  world,.!  think  that  is  about  the 
worst.  In  the  middle  ages,  the  monks 
in  St.  Bernard's  ascetic  community  at 
Clairvaux  excommunicated  a  vineyard 
which  a  less  rigid  monk  had  planted 


54  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

near,  so  that  it  bore  nothing.  In  1120, 
a  bishop  of  Laon  excommunicated  the 
caterpillars  in  his  diocese ;  and,  the  fol 
lowing  year,  St.  Bernard  excommunicat 
ed  the  flies  in  the  Monastery  of  Foigny ; 
and  in  1510  the  ecclesiastical  court  pro 
nounced  the  dread  sentence  against  the 
rats  of  Autun,  Macon,  and  Lyons.  These 
examples  are  sufficient  precedents.  It 
will  be  well  for  the  council,  however, 
not  to  publish  the  bull  either  just  before 
or  just  after  a  rain ;  for  nothing  can  kill 
this  pestilent  heresy  when  the  ground 
is  wet.  • 

It  is  the  time  of  festivals.  Polly  says 
we  ought  to  have  one,  —  a  strawberry- 
festival.  She  says  they  are  perfectly 
delightful :  it  is  so  nice  to  get  people 
together !  —  this  hot  weather.  They  cre 
ate  such  a  good  feeling  !  I  myself  am 
very  fond  of  festivals.  I  always  go,  — 
when  I  can  consistently.  Besides  the 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  55 

strawberries,  there  are  ice-creams  and 
cake  and  lemonade,  and  that  sort  of 
thing ;  and  one  always  feels  so  well  the 
next  day  after  such  a  diet !  But  as  so 
cial  re-unions,  if  there  are  good  things 
to  eat,  nothing  can  be  pleasanter ;  and 
they  are  very  profitable,  if  you  have  a 
good  object.  I  agreed  that  we  ought  to 
have  a  festival;  but  I  did  not  know 
what  object  to  devote  it  to.  We  are 
not  in  need  of  an  organ,  nor  of  any  pulpit- 
cushions.  I  do  not  know  as  they  use 
pulpit-cushions  now  as  much  as  they 
used  to,  when  preachers  had  to  have 
something  soft  to  pound,  so  that  they 
would  not  hurt  their  fists.  I  suggested 
pocket-handkerchiefs,  and  flannels  for 
next  winter.  But  Polly  says  that  will 
not  do  at  all.  You  must  have  some 
charitable  object,  —  something  that  ap 
peals  to  a  vast  sense  of  something ; 
something  that  it  will  be  right  to  get  up 


56  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

lotteries  and  that  sort  of  thing  for.  1 
suggest  a  festival  for  the  benefit  of  iny 
garden;  and  this  seems  feasible.  In 
order  to  make  every  thing  pass  off  pleas 
antly,  invited  guests  will  bring  or  send 
their  own  strawberries  and  cream,  which 
I  shall  be  happy  to  sell  to  them  at  a  slight 
advance.  There  are  a  great  many  im 
provements  which  the  garden  needs; 
among  them  a  sounding-board,  so  that  the 
neighbors'  children  can  hear  when  I  tell 
them  to  get  a  little  farther  off  from  the 
currant-bushes.  I  should  also  like  a  se 
lection  from  the  ten  commandments,  in 
big  letters,  posted  up  conspicuously,  and 
a  few  traps,  that  will  detain,  but  not 
maim,  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  can 
not  read.  But  what  is  most  important 
is,  that  the  ladies  should  crochet  nets  to 
cover  over  the  strawberries.  A  good- 
sized,  well-managed  festival  ought  to 
produce  nets  enough  to  cover  my  entire 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN.  57 

beds;  and  I  can  think  of  no  other 
method  of  preserving  the  berries  from 
the  birds  next  year.  I  wonder  how 
many  strawberries  it  would  need  for  a 
festival,  and  whether  they  would  cost 
more  than  the  nets. 

I  am  more  and  more  impressed,  as  the 
summer  goes  on,  with  the  inequality  of 
man's  fight  with  Nature  ;  especially  in  a 
civilized  state.  In  savagery,  it  does  not 
so  much  matter ;  for  one  does  not  take  a 
square  hold,  and  put  out  his  strength, 
But  rather  accommodates  himself  to  the 
situation,  and  takes  what  he  can  get, 
without  raising  any  dust,  or  putting 
himself  into  everlasting  opposition.  But 
the  minute  he  begins  to  clear  a  spot  lar 
ger  than  he  needs  to  sleep  in  for  a 
night,  and  to  try  to  have  his  own  way  in 
the  least,  Nature  is  at  once  up,  arid  vigi 
lant,  and  contests  him  at  every  step  with 
all  her  ingenuity  and  unwearied  vigor 


58  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

This  talk  of  subduing  Nature  is  pretty 
much  nonsense.  I  -do  not  intend  to 
surrender  in  the  midst  of  the  summer 
campaign,  yet  I  cannot  but  think  how 
much  more  peaceful  my  relations  would 
now  be  with  the  primal  forces,  if  I  had 
let  Nature  make  the  garden  according 
to  her  own  notion.  (This  is  written 
with  the  thermometer  at  ninety  degrees, 
and  the  weeds  starting  up  with  a  fresh 
ness  and  vigor,  as  if  they  had  just 
thought  of  it  for  the  first  time,  and  had 
not  been  cut  down  and  dragged  out 
every  other  day  since  the  snow  went 

off.) 

We  have  got  down  the  forests,  and 
exterminated  savage  beasts ;  but  Nature 
is  no  more  subdued  than  before :  she 
only  changes  her  tactics,  —  uses  smaller 
guns,  so  to  speak.  She  re-enforces  her 
self  with  a  variety  of  bugs,  worms,  and 
vermin,  and  weeds,  unknown  to  the  sav- 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  59 

age  state,  in  order  to  make  war  upon 
the  things  of  our  planting ;  and  calls 
in  the  fowls  of  the  air,  just  as  we  think 
the  battle  is  won,  to  snatch  away  the 
booty.  When  one  gets  almost  weary  of 
the  struggle,  she  is  as  fresh  as  at  the 
beginning, — just,  in  fact,  ready  for  the 
fray.  I,  for  my  part,  begin  to  appreci 
ate  the  value  of  frost  and  snow ;  for 
they  give  the  husbandman  a  little  peace, 
and  enable  him,  for  a  season,  to  contem 
plate  his  incessant  foe  subdued.  I  do 
not  wonder  that  the  tropical  people, 
where  Nature  never  goes  to  sleep,  give 
it  up,  and  sit  in  lazy  acquiescence. 

Here  I  have  been  working  all  the 
season  to  make  a  piece  of  lawn.  It  had 
to  be  graded  and  sowed  and  rolled ;  and 
I  have  been  shaving  it  like  a  barber. 
When  it  was  soft,  every  thing  had  a  ten 
dency  to  go  on  to  it,  —  cows,  and  espe 
cially  wandering  hackmen.  Hackrnen 


60  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

(who  are  a  product  of  civilization)  know 
a  lawn  when  they  see  it.  They  rather 
have  a  fancy  for  it,  and  always  try  to 
drive  so  as  to  cut  the  sharp  borders  of 
it,  and  leave  the  marks  of  their  wheels 
in  deep  ruts  of  cut-up,  ruined  turf.  The 
other  morning,  I  had  just  been  running 
the  mower  over  the  lawn,  and  stood 
regarding  its  smoothness,  when  I  noticed 
one,  two,  three  puffs  of  fresh  earth  in  it ; 
and,  hastening  thither,  I  found  that  the 
mole  had  arrived  to  'complete  the  work 
of 'the  hackmen.  In  a  half-hour,  he  had 
rooted  up  the  ground  like  a  pig.  I 
found  his  run-ways.  I  waited  for  him 
with  a  spade.  He  did  not  appear;  but, 
the  next  time  I  passed  by,  he  had 
ridged  the  ground  in  all  directions,  —  a 
smooth,  beautiful  animal,  with  fur  like 
silk,  if  you  could  only  catch  him.  He 
appears  to  enjoy  the  lawn  as  much  as 
the  hackmen  did.  He  does  not  care 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  61 

how  smooth  it  is.  He  is  constantly 
mining,  and  ridging  it  up.  I  am  not 
sure  but  he  could  be  counter-mined.  I 
have  half  a  mind  to  put  powder  in  here 
and  there,  and  blow  the  whole  thing 
into  the  air.  Some  folks  set  traps  for 
the  mole  ;  but  my  moles  never  seem  to 
go  twice  in  the  same  place.  I  am  not 
sure  but  it  would  bother  them  to  sow 
the  lawn  with  interlacing  snake-grass 
(the  botanical  name  of  which,  somebody 
writes  me,  is  devil-grass :  the  first 
time  I  have  heard  that  the  Devil  has  a 
botanical  name),  which  would  worry 
them,  if  it  is  as  difficult  for  them  to  get 
through  it  as  it  is  for  me. 

I  do  not  speak  of  this  mole  in  any 
tone  of  complaint.  He  is  only  a  part  of 
the  untiring  resources  which  Nature 
brings  against  the  humble  gardener.  I 
desire  to  write  nothing  against  him 
which  I  should  wish  to  recall  at  the  last, 


62  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

—  nothing  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  that 
beautiful  saying  of  the  dying  boy,  "  He 
had  no  copy-book,  which,  dying,  he  was 
sorry  he  had  blotted." 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  63 


EIGHTH  WEEK. 

"IV  /f~Y  garden  has  been  visited  by  a 
-Lj-»-  High  Official  Person.  President 
G — nt  was  here  just  before  the  Fourth, 
getting  his  mind  quiet  for  that  event 
by  a  few  days  of  retirement,  staying 
with  a  friend  at  the  head  of  our  street ; 
and  I  asked  him  if  he  wouldn't  like  to 
come  down  our  way  Sunday  afternoon, 
and  take  a  plain,  simple  look  at  my  gar 
den,  eat  a  little  lemon  ice-cream  and 
jelly-cake,  and  drink  a  glass  of  native 
lager-bier.  I  thought  of  putting  up 
over  my  gate,  "  Welcome  to  the  Na 
tion's  Gardener ; "  but  I  hate  nonsense, 
and  didn't  do  it.  I,  however,  hoed  dil 
igently  on  Saturday :  what  weeds  I 
couldn't  remove  I  buried,  so  that  every 


64  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

thing  would  look  all  right.  The  borders 
of  my  drive  were  trimmed  with  scissors  ; 
and  every  thing  that  could  offend  the 
Eye  of  the  Great  was  hustled  out  of  the 
way. 

In  relating  this  interview,  it  must  be 
distinctly  understood  that  I  am  not 
responsible  for  any  thing  that  the  presi 
dent  said  ;  nor  is  he,  either.  He  is  not 
a  great  speaker ;  but  whatever  he  says 
has  an  esoteric  and  an  exoteric  meaning ; 
and  some  of  his  remarks  about  my 
vegetables  went  very  deep.  I  said 
nothing  to  him  whatever  about  politics, 
at  which  he  seemed  a  good  deal  sur 
prised  :  he  said  it  was  the  first  garden 
he  had  ever  been  in,  with  a  man,  when 
the  talk  was  not  of  appointments.  I 
told  him  that  this  was  purely  vege 
table  ;  after  which  he  seemed  more  at 
his  ease,  and,  in  fact,  delighted  with 
every  thing  he  saw.  He  was  much 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  65 

interested  in  my  strawberry-beds,  asked 
what  varieties  I  had,  and  requested  me 
to  send  him  some  seed.  He  said  the 
patent-office  seed  was  as  difficult  to 
raise  as  an  appropriation  for  the  St. 
Domingo  business.  The  playful  bean 
seemed  also  to  please  him ;  and  he  said 
he  had  never  seen  such  impressive  corn 
and  potatoes  at  this  time  of  year ;  that 
it  was  to  him  an  unexpected  pleasure, 
and  one  of  the  choicest  memories  that 
he  should  take  away  with  him  of  his 
visit  to  New  England. 

N.B. — That  corn  and  those  potatoes 
which  Gen.  Gr — nt  looked  at,  I  will  sell 
for  seed,  at  five  dollars  an  ear,  and  one 
dollar  a  potato.  Office-seekers  need  not 
apply. 

Knowing  the  president's  great  desire 
for  peas,  I  kept  him  from  that  part  of 
the  garden  where  the  vines  grow.  But 
they  could  not  be  concealed.  Those  who 


66  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

say  that  the  president  is  not  a  man  easily 
moved  are  knaves  or  fools.  When  he 
saw  my  pea-pods,  ravaged  by  the  birds, 
he  burst  into  tears.  A  man  of  war,  he 
knows  the  value  of  peas.  I  told  him 
they  were  an  excellent  sort,  "  The  Cham 
pion  of  England."  As  quick  as  a  flash, 
he  said,  — 

"  Why  don't  you  call  them  "The  Bev- 
erdy  Johnson  "  ? 

It  was  a  very  clever  bon-mot ;  but  I 
changed  the  subject. 

The  sight  of  my  squashes,  with  stalks 
as  big  as  speaking-trumpets,  restored  the 
president  to  his  usual  spirits.  He  said 
the  summer  squash  was  the  most  ludi 
crous  vegetable  he  knew.  It  was  nearly 
all  leaf  and  blow,  with  only  a  sickly, 
crook-necked  fruit  after  a  mighty  fuss. 
It  reminded  him  of  the  member  of  Con 
gress  from ;  but  I  hastened  to 

change  the  subject. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN.  67 

As  we  walked  along,  the  keen  eye  of 
the  president  rested  upon  some  hand 
some  sprays  of  "  pusley,"  which  must 
have  grown  up  since  Saturday  night.  It 
was  most  fortunate  ;  for  it  led  his  excel-, 
lency  to  speak  of  the  Chinese  problem. 
He  said  he  had  been  struck  with  one  cou 
pling  of  the  Chinese  and  "  pusley  "  in  one 
of  my  agricultural  papers  ;  and  it  had  a 
significance  more  far-reaching  than  I  had 
probably  supposed.  He  had  made  the 
Chinese  problem  a  special  study.  He 
said  that  I  was  right  in  saying  that 
"pusley"  was  the  natural  food  of 
the  Chinaman,  and  that  where  the 
"  pusley"  was  there  would  the  Chinaman 
be  also.  For  his  part,  he  welcomed 
the  Chinese  emigration :  we  needed  the 
Chinaman  in  our  gardens  to  eat  the 
"pusley;"  and  he  thought  the  whole 
problem  solved  by  this  simple  considera 
tion.  To  get  rid  of  rats  and  "  pusley,"  he 


68  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

said,  was  a  necessity  of  our  civilization. 
He  did  not  care  so  much  about  the  shoe- 
business  ;  he  did  not  think  that  the  lit 
tle  Chinese  shoes  that  he  had  seen  would 
be  of  service  in  the  army :  but  the  gar 
den-interest  was  quite  another  affair. 
We  want  to  make  a  garden  of  our  whole 
country :  the  hoe,  in  the  hands  of  a  man 
truly  great,  he  was  pleased  to  say,  was 
mightier  than  the  pen.  He  presumed 
that  Gen.  B — tl — r  had  never  taken  into 
consideration  the  garden-question,  or  he 
would  not  assume  the  position  he  does 
with  regard  to  the  Chinese  emigration. 
He  would  let  the  Chinese  come,  even 
if  B — tl — r  had  to  leave,  I  thought  he 
was  going  to  say,  but  I  changed  the  sub 
ject. 

During  our  entire  garden  interview 
(operatically  speaking,  the  garden-scene), 
the  president  was  not  smoking.  I  do  not 
know  how  the  impression  arose  that  he 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  69 

"  uses  tobacco  in  any  form ;  "  for  I  have 
seen  him  several  times,  and  he  was  not 
smoking.  Indeed,  I  offered  him  a  Con 
necticut  six ;  but  he  wittily  said  that  he 
did  not  like  a  weed  in  a  garden,  —  a  re 
mark  which  I  took  to  have  a  personal 
political  bearing,  and  changed  the  sub 
ject. 

The  president  was  a  good  deal  sur 
prised  at  the  method  and  fine  appear 
ance  of  my  garden,  and  to  learn  that  I 
had  the  sole  care  of  it.  He  asked  me  if 
I  pursued  an  original  course,  or  whether 
I  got  my  ideas  from  writers  on  the  sub 
ject.  I  told  him  that  I  had  had  no 
time  to  read  any  thing  on  the  subject 
since  I  began  to  hoe,  except  "  Lothair," 
from  which  I  got  my  ideas  of  landscape- 
gardening  ;  and  that  I  had  worked  the 
garden  entirely  according  to  my  own 
notions,  except  that  I  had  borne  in  mind 
his  injunction, "  to  fight  it  out  on  this  line 


70  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

if" —  The  president  stopped  me  ab 
ruptly,  and  said  it  was  unnecessary  to 
repeat  that  remark :  he  thought  he  had 
heard  it  before.  Indeed,  he  deeply  re 
gretted  that  he  had  ever  made  it. 
Sometimes,  he  said,  after  hearing  it  in 
speeches,  and  coming  across  it  in  resolu 
tions,  and  reading  it  in  newspapers,  and 
having  it  dropped  jocularly  by  facetious 
politicians,  who  were  boring  him  for  an 
office,  about  twenty-five  times  a  day,  say 
for  a  month,  it  would  get  to  running 
through  his  head,  like  the  "  shoo-fly " 
song  which  B — tl — r  sings  in  the  House, 
until  it  did  seem  as  if  he  should  go  dis 
tracted.  He  said,  no  man  could  stand 
that  kind  of  sentence  hammering  on  his 
brain  for  years. 

The  president  was  so  much  pleased 
with  my  management  of  the  garden, 
that  he  offered  me  (at  least,  I  so  under 
stood  him)'  the  position  of  head  gardener 


MY  SUMMER  IX  A   GARDEN.  71 

at  the  White  House,  to  have  care  of 
the  exotics.  I  told  him  that  I  thanked 
him,  but  that  I  did  not  desire  any 
foreign  appointment.  I  had  resolved, 
when  the  administration  came  in,  not 
to  take  an  appointment;  and  I  had  kept 
my  resolution.  As  to  any  home  office, 
I  was  poor,  but  honest ;  and,  of  course, 
it  would  be  useless  for  me  to  take  one. 
The  president  mused  a  moment,  and 
then  smiled,  and  said  he  would  see 
what  could  be  done  for  me.  I  did 
not  change  the  subject ;  but  nothing 
further  was  said  by  Gen.  Gr — nt. 

The  president  is  a  great  talker  (con 
trary  to  the  general  impression) ;  but 
I  think  he  appreciated  his  quiet  hour 
in  my  garden.  He  said  it  carried  him 
back  to  his  youth  farther  than  any 
thing  he  had  seen  lately.  He  looked 
forward  with  delight  to  the  time  when 
he  could  again  have  his  private  garden, 


72  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

grow  his  own  lettuce  and  tomatoes,  and 
not  have  to  get  so  much  "sarce"  from 
Congress. 

The  chair  in  which  the  president  sat, 
while  declining  to  take  a  glass  of  lager,' 
I  have  had  destroyed,  in  order  that 
no  one  may  sit  in  it.  It  was  the  only 
way  to  save  it,  if  I  may  so  speak.  It 
would  have  been  impossible  to  keep 
it  from  use  by  any  precautions.  There 
are  people  who  would  have  sat  in  it, 
if  the  seat  had  been  set  with  iron  spikes. 
Such  is  the  adoration  of  Station. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  73 


NINTH  WEEK. 

T  AM  more  and  more  impressed  with' 
-*-  the  moral  qualities  of  vegetables, 
and  contemplate  forming  a  science 
which  shall  rank  with  comparative 
anatomy  and  comparative  philology, — 
the  science  of  comparative  vegetable 
morality.  We  live  in  an  age  of  proto 
plasm.  And,  if  life-matter  is  essentially 
the  same  in  all  forms  of  life,  I  purpose 
to  begin  early,  and  ascertain  the  nature 
of  the  plants  for  which  I  am  responsible. 
I  will  not  associate  with  any  vegetable 
which  is  disreputable,  or  has  not  some 
quality  that  can  contribute  to  my  moral 
growth.  I  do  not  care  to  be  seen  much 
with  the  squashes  or  the  dead-beets. 
Fortunately  I  can  cut  down  any  sorts 


74  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

I  do  not  like  with  the  hoe,  and,  probably, 
commit  no  more  sin  in  so  doing,  than 
the  Christians  did  in  hewing  down  the 
Jews  in  the  middle  ages. 

This  matter  of  vegetable  rank  has  not 
'been  at  all  studied  as  it  should  be. 
Why  do  we  respect  some  vegetables, 
and  despise  others,  when  all  of  them 
come  to  an  equal  honor  or  ignominy  on 
the  table  ?  The  bean  is  a  graceful, 
confiding,  engaging  vine ;  but  you 
never  can  put  beans  into  poetry,  nor 
into  the  highest  sort  of  prose.  There 
is  no  dignity  in  the  bean.  Corn,  which, 
in  my  garden,  grows  alongside  the 
bean,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  with  no 
affectation  of  superiority,  is,  however, 
the  child  of  song.  It  waves  in  all 
literature.  But  mix  it  with  beans,  and 
its  high  tone  is  gone.  Succotash  is 
vulgar.  It  is  the  bean  in  it.  The  bean 
is  a  vulgar  vegetable,  without  culture, 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  75 

or  any  flavor  of  high  society  among 
vegetables.  Then  there  is  the  cool 
cucumber,  like  so  many  people, — good 
for  nothing  when  it  is  ripe  and  the 
wildness  has  gone  out  of  it.  How  infe 
rior  in  quality  it  is  to  the  melon,  which 
grows  upon  a  similar  vine,  is  of  a  like 
watery  consistency,  but  is  not  half  so 
valuable !  The  cucumber  is  a  sort  of 
low  comedian  in  a  company  where  the 
melon  is  a  minor  gentleman.  I  might 
also  contrast  the  celery  with  the  potato. 
The  associations  are  as  opposite  as 
the  dining-room  of  the  duchess  and  the 
cabin  of  the  peasant.  I  admire  the 
potato,  both  in  vine  and  blossom;  but 
it  is  not  aristocratic.  I  began  digging 
my  potatoes,  by  the  way,  about  the 
4th  of  July;  and  I  fancy  I  have  dis 
covered  the  right  way  to  do  it.  I  treat 
the  potato  just  as  I  would  a  cow.  I 
do  not  pull  them  up,  and  shake  them 


76  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

out,  and  destroy  them ;  but  I  dig  care 
fully  at  the  side  of  the  hill,  remove 
the  fruit  which  is  grown,  leaving  the 
vine  undisturbed :  and  my  theory  is, 
that  it  will  go  on  bearing,  and  sub 
mitting  to  my  exactions,  until  the  frost 
cuts  it  down.  It  is  a  game  that  one 
would  not  undertake  with  a  vegetable 
of  tone. 

The  lettuce  is  to  me  a  most  interest 
ing  study.  Lettuce  is  like  conversation : 
it  must  be  fresh  and  crisp,  so  sparkling, 
that  you  scarcely  notice  the  bitter  in 
it.  Lettuce,  like  most  talkers,  is,  how 
ever,  apt  to  run  rapidly  to  seed. 
Blessed  is  that  sort  which  comes  to  a 
head,  and  so  remains,  like  a  few  people 
I  know;  growing  more  solid  and  satis 
factory  and  tender  at  the  same  time, 
and  whiter  at  the  centre,  and  crisp  in 
their  maturity.  Lettuce,  like  conver 
sation,  requires  a  good  deal  of  oil,  to 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  77 

avoid  friction,  and  keep  the  company 
smooth ;  a  pinch  of  attic  salt ;  a  dash 
of  pepper;  a  quantity  of  mustard  and 
vinegar,  by  all  means,  but  so  mixed 
that  you  will  notice  no  sharp  contrasts ; 
and  a  trifle  of  sugar.  You  can  put  any 
thing,  and  the  more  things  the  better, 
into  salad,  as  into  a  conversation;  but 
every  thing  depends  upon  the  skill  of 
mixing.  I  feel  that  I  am  in  the  best 
society  when  I  am  with  lettuce.  It 
is  in  the  select  circle  of  vegetables. 
The  tomato  appears  well  on  the  table ; 
but  you  do  not  want  to  ask  its  origin. 
It  is  a  most  agreeable  parvenu.  Of 
course,  I  have  said  nothing  about  the 
berries.  They  live  in  another  and  more 
ideal  region;  except,  perhaps,  the  cur 
rant.  Here  we  see,  that,  even  among 
berries,  there  are  degrees  of  breeding. 
The  currant  is  well  enough,  clear  as 
truth,  and  exquisite  in  color ;  but  I  ask 


78  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

you  to  notice  how  far  it  is  from  the 
exclusive  hauteur  of  the  aristocratic 
strawberry,  and  the  native  refinement 
of  the  quietly  elegant  raspberry. 

I  do  not  know  that  chemistry,  search 
ing  for  protoplasm,  is  able  to  discover 
the  tendency  of  vegetables.  It  can 
only  be  found  out  by  outward  observa 
tion.  I  confess  that  I  am  suspicious  of 
the  bean,  for  instance.  There  are  signs 
in  it  of  an  unregulated  life.  I  put  up 
the  most  attractive  sort  of  poles  for  my 
Limas.  They  stand  high  and  straight, 
like  church-spires,  in  my  theological 
garden, — lifted  up;  and  some  of  them 
have  even  budded,  like  Aaron's  rod. 
No  church-steeple  in  a  New-England 
village  was  ever  better  fitted  to  draw 
to  it  the  rising  generation  on  Sunday, 
than  those  poles  to  lift  up  my  beans 
towards  heaven.  Some  of  them  did  run 
up  the  sticks  seven  feet,  and  then 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN.  79 

straggled  off  into  the  air  in  a  wanton 
manner;  but '  more  than  half  of  them 
went  galivanting  off  to  the  neighboring 
grape^- trellis,  and  wound  their  tendrils 
with  the  tendrils  of  the  grape,  with  a 
disregard  of  the  proprieties  of  life 
which  is  a  satire  upon  human  nature. 
And  the  grape  is  morally  no  better.  I 
think  the  ancients,  who  were  not 
troubled  with  the  recondite  mystery  of 
protoplasm,  were  right  in  the  mythic 
union  of  Bacchus  and  Venus. 

Talk  about  the  Darwinian  theory  of 
development,  and  the  principle  of 
natural  selection !  I  should  like  to  see  a 
garden  let  to  run  in  accordance  with  it. 
If  I  had  left  my  vegetables  and  weeds 
to  a  free  fight,  in  which  the  strongest 
specimens  only  should  come  to  maturi 
ty,  and  the  weaker  go  to  the  wall,  I  can 
clearly  see  that  I  should  have  had  a  pret 
ty  mess  of  it  It  would  have  been  a  scene 


80  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

of  passion  and  license  and  brutality. 
The  "pusley  "  would  have  strangled  the 
strawberry ;  the  upright  corn,  which  has 
now  ears  to  hear  the  guilty  beating  of 
the  hearts  of  the  children  who  steal  the 
raspberries,  would  have  been  dragged 
to  the  earth  by  the  wandering  bean ; 
the  snake-grass  would  have  left  no  place 
for  the  potatoes  under  ground  ;  and  the 
tomatoes  would  have  been  swamped  by 
the  lusty  weeds.  With  a  firm  hand,  I 
have  had  to  make  my  own  "natural 
selection."  Nothing  will  so  well  bear 
watching  as  a  garden,  except  a  family 
of  children  next  door.  Their  power  of 
selection  beats  mine.  If  they  could 
read  half  as  well  as  they  can  steal  a 
while  away,  I  should  put  up  a  notice, 
"Children,  beware  !  There  is  Protoplasm 
here."  But  I  suppose  it  would  have  no 
effect.  I  believe  they  would  eat  proto 
plasm  as  quick  as  any  thing  else,  ripe 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  81 

or  green.  I  wonder  if  this  is  going  to 
be  a  cholera-year.  Considerable  cholera 
is  the  only  thing  that  would  let  my 
apples  and  pears  ripen.  Of  course  I  do 
not  care  for  the  fruit ;  but  I  do  not 
want  to  take  the  responsibility  of  letting 
so  much  "  life -matter,"  full  of  crude  and 
even  wicked  vegetable-human  tenden 
cies,  pass  into  the  composition  of  the 
neighbors'  children,  some  of  whom  may 
be  as  immortal  as  snake-grass.  There 
ought  to  be  a  public  meeting  about  this, 
and  resolutions,  and  perhaps  a  clam 
bake.  At  least,  it  ought  to  be  put  into 
the  catechism,  and  put  in  strong. 


82  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 


TENTH  WEEK. 

T  THINK  I  have  discovered  the  way 
-**  to  keep  peas  from  the  birds.  I 
tried  the  .  scare-crow  plan,  in  a  way 
which  I  thought  would  out-wit  the 
shrewdest  bird.  The  brain  of  the  bird 
is  not  large ;  but  it  is  all  concentrated  on 
one  object,  and  that  is  the  attempt  to 
elude  the  devices  of  modern  civilization 
which  injure  his  chances  of  food.  I 
knew,  that,  if  I  put  up  a  complete  stuffed 
man,  the  bird  would  detect  the  imita 
tion  at  once  :  the  perfection  of  the  thing 
would  show  him  that  it  was  a  trick. 
People  always  overdo  the  matter  when 
they  attempt  deception.  I  therefore 
hung  some  loose  garments,  of  a  bright 
color,  upon  a  rake-head,  and  set  them 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  83 

up  among  the  vines.  The  supposition 
was,  that  the  bird  would  think  there  was 
an  effort  to  trap  him,  that  there  was  a 
man  behind,  holding  up  these  garments, 
and  would  sing,  as  he  kept  at  a 
distance,  "  You  can't  catch  me  with  any 
such  double  device."  The  bird  would 
know,  or  think  he  knew,  that  I  would 
not  hang  up  such  a  scare,  in  the  ex 
pectation  that  it  would  pass  for  a  man, 
and  deceive  a  bird ;  and  he  would  there 
fore  look  for  a  deeper  plot.  I  expected 
to  out-wit  the  bird  by  a  duplicity  that 
was  simplicity  itself.  I  may  have  over- 
calculated  the  sagacity  and  reasoning 
power  of  the  bird.  At  any  rate,  I  did 
over-calculate  the  amount  of  peas  I 
should  gather. 

But  my  game  was  only  half  played. 
In  another  part  of  the  garden  were  other 
peas,  growing  and  blowing.  To  these  I 
took  good  care  not  to  attract  the  atten- 


84  ^MY  SUMMER  IAT  A   GARDEN. 

tion  of  the  bird  by  any  scare -crow  what 
ever!  I  left  the  old  scare-crow  con 
spicuously  flaunting  above  the  old  vines ; 
and  by  this  means  I  hope  to  keep  the 
attention  of  the  birds  confined  to  that 
side  of  the  garden.  I  am  convinced  that 
this  is  the  true  use  of  a  scare-crow :  it  is 
a  lure,  and  not  a  warning.  If  you  wish 
to  save  men  from  any  particular  vice, 
set  up  a  tremendous  cry  of  warning 
about  some  other;  and  they  will  all  give 
their  special  efforts  to  the  one  to  which 
attention  is  called.  This  profound  truth 
is  about  the  only  thing  I  have  yet  real 
ized  out  of  my  pea-vines. 

However,  the  garden  does  begin  to 
yield.  I  know  of  nothing  that  makes 
one  feel  more  complacent,  in  these  July 
days,  than  to  have  his  vegetables  from 
his  own  garden.  What  an  effect  it  has 
on  the  market-man  and  the  butcher !  It 
is  a  kind  of  declaration  of  independence. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN.  85 

• 

The  market-man  shows  me  his  peas  and 
beets  and  tomatoes,  and  supposes  he 
shall  send  me  out  some  with  the  meat. 
"  No,  I  thank  you/'  I  say  carelessly :  "  I 
am  raising  my  own  this  year."  Whereas 
I  have  been  wont  to  remark,  "  Your  ve 
getables  look  a  little  wilted  this  wea 
ther,"  I  now  say,  "  What  a  fine  lot  of 
vegetables  you?ve  got !  "  When  a  man 
is  not  going  to  buy,  he  can  afford  to  be 
generous.  To  raise  his  own  vegetables 
makes  a  person  feel,  somehow,  more  lib 
eral.  I  think  the  butcher  is  touched  by 
the  influence,  and  cuts  off  a  better  roast 
for  me.  The  butcher  is  my  friend  when 
he  sees  that  I  am  not  wholly  dependent 
on  him. 

It  is  at  home,  however,  that  the  effect 
is  most  marked,  though  sometimes  in  a 
way  that  I  had  not  expected.  I  have 
never  read  of  any  Roman  supper  that 
seemed  to  me  equal  to  a  dinner  of  my 


86  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

• 

own  vegetables ;  when  every  thing  on 
the  table  is  the  product  of  my  own  la 
bor,  except  the  clams,  which  I  have  not 
been  able  to  raise  yet,  and  the  chickens, 
which  have  withdrawn  from  the  garden 
just  when  they  were  most  attractive.  It 
is  strange  what  a  taste  you  suddenly  have 
for  things  you  never  liked  before.  The 
squash  has  always  been  to  me  a  dish  of 
contempt;  but  I  eat  it  now  as  if  it  were 
my  best  friend.  I  never  cared  for  the 
beet  or  the  bean ;  but  I  fancy  now  that 
I  could  eat  them  all,  tops  and  all,  so 
completely  have  they  been  transformed 
by  the  soil  in  which  they  grew.  I  think 
the  squash  is  less  squashy,  and  the  beet 
has  a  deeper  hue  of  rose,  for  my  care  of 
them. 

I  had  begun  to  nurse  a  good  deal  of 
pride  in  presiding  over  a  table  whereon 
was  the  fruit  of  my  honest  industry. 
But  woman  !  —  John  Stuart  Mill  is  right 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  87 

I 

when  he  says  that  we  do  not  know  any 
thing  about  women.  Six  thousand  years 
is  as  one  day  with  them.  I  thought  I 
had  something  to  do  with  those  ve 
getables.  But  when  I  saw  Polly  seated 
at  her  side  of  the  table,  presiding 
over  the  new  and  susceptible  vegetables, 
flanked  by  the  squash  and  the  beans,  and 
smiling  upon  the  green  corn  and  the  new 
potatoes,  as  cool  as  the  cucumbers  which 
lay  sliced  in  ice  before  her,  and  when 
she  began  to  dispense  the  fresh  dishes,  I 
saw  at  once  that  the  day  of  my  destiny 
was  over.  You  would  have  thought 
that  she  owned  all  the  vegetables,  and 
had  raised  them  all  from  their  earliest 
years.  Such  quiet,  vegetable  airs  !  Such 
gracious  appropriation !  At  length  I 
said,  — 

"  Polly,  do  you  know  who  planted  that 
squash,  or  those  squashes  ?  " 

"  James,  I  suppose." 


88  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GAKDEN. 

"  Well,  yes,  perhaps  James  did  plant 
them,  to  a  certain  extent.  But  who 
hoed  them  ?" 

"  We  did." 

"  We  did !  "  I  said  in  the  most  sarcas 
tic  manner.  "  And  I  suppose  we  put  on 
the  sack-cloth  and  ashes,  when  the 
striped  bug  came  at  four  o'clock,  A.  M., 
and  we  watched  the  tender  leaves,  and 
watered  night  and  morning  the  feeble 
plants.  I  tell  you,  Polly,"  said  I,  un 
corking  the  Bordeaux  raspberry  vinegar, 
"  there  is  not  a  pea  here  that  does  not 
represent  a  drop  of  moisture  wrung 
from  my  brow,  not  a  beet  that  does  not 
stand  for  a  back-ache,  not  a  squash  that 
has  not  caused  me  untold  anxiety  ;  and 
I  did  hope  —  but  I  will  say  no  more." 

Observation.  —  In  this  sort  of  family 
discussion,  "  I  will  say  no  more  "  is  the 
most  effective  thing  you  can  close  up 
with. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  89 

I  am  not  an  alarmist.  I  hope  I  am  as 
cool  as  anybody  this  hot  summer.  But 
I  am  quite  ready  to  say  to  Polly,  or  any 
other  woman,  "  You  can  have  the  ballot ; 
only  leave  me  the  vegetables,  or,  what  is 
more  important,  the  consciousness  of 
power  in  vegetables."  1  see  how  it  is. 
Woman  is  now  supreme  in  the  house. 
She  already  stretches  out  her  hand  to 
grasp  the  garden.  She  will  gradually 
control  every  thing.  Woman  is  one  of 
the  ablest  and  most  cunning  creatures 
who  have  ever  mingled  in  human  affairs. 
I  understand  those  women  who  say  they 
don't  want  the  ballot.  They  purpose  to 
hold  the  real  power,  while  we  go  through 
the  mockery  of  making  laws.  They 
want  the  power  without  the  responsi 
bility.  (Suppose  my  squash  had  not 
come  up,  or  my  beans  —  as  they  threat 
ened  at  one  time  —  had  gone  the  wrong 
way  :  where  would  I  have  been  ?  )  We 


90  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

are  to  be  held  to  all  the  responsibilities. 
Woman  takes  the  lead  in  all  the  depart 
ments,  leaving  us  politics  only.  And 
what  is  politics  ?  Let  me  raise  the  vege 
tables  of  a  nation,  says  Polly,  and  I  care 
not  who  makes  its  politics.  Here  I  sat 
at  the  table,  armed  with  the  ballot,  but 
really  powerless  among  my  own  vege 
tables.  While  we  are  being  amused  by 
the  ballot,  woman  is  quietly  taking 
things  into  her  own  hancls. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  91 


ELEVENTH    WEEK. 

TJEKHAPS,  after  all,  it  is  not  what  you 
-*-  get  out  of  a  garden,  but  what  you  put 
into  it,  that  is  the  most  remunerative. 
What  is  a  man  ?  A  question  frequently 
asked,  and  never,  so  far  as  I  know,  satis 
factorily  answered.  He  commonly  spends 
his  seventy  years,  if  so  many  are  given 
him,  in  getting  ready  to  enjoy  himself. 
How  many  hours,  how  many  minutes, 
does  one  get  of  that  pure  content 
which  is  happiness?  I  do  not  mean 
laziness,  which  is  always  discontent ;  but 
that  serene  enjoyment,  in  which  all  the 
natural  senses  have  easy  play,  and  the 
unnatural  ones  have  a  holiday.  There 
is  probably  nothing  that  has  such  a  tran 
quillizing  effect,  and  leads  into  such  con- 


92  MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN. 

tent,  as  gardening.  By  gardening,  I  do 
not  mean  that  insane  desire  to  raise  ve 
getables  which  some  have  ;  but  the  phil 
osophical  occupation  of  contact  with  the 
earth,  and  companionship  with  gently 
growing  things  and  patient  processes; 
that  exercise  which  soothes  the  spirit, 
and  develops  the  deltoid  muscles. 

In  half  an  hour  I  can  hoe  myself  right 
away  from  this  world,  as  we  commonly 
see  it,  into  a  large  place  where  there  are 
no  obstacles.  What  an  occupation  it  is  for 
thought !  The  mind  broods  like  a  hen 
on  eggs.  The  trouble  is,  that  you  are 
not  thinking  about  any  thing,  but  are 
really  vegetating  like  the  plants  around 
you.  I  begin  to  know  what  the  joy  of 
the  grape-vine  is  in  running  up  the  trel 
lis,  which  is  similar  to  that  of  the  squirrel 
in  running  up  a  tree.  We  all  have  some 
thing  in  our  nature  that  requires  contact 
with  the  earth.  In  the  solitude  of  gar- 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  93 

den-labor,  one  gets  into  a  sort  of  com 
munion  with  the  vegetable  life,  which 
makes  the  old  mythology  possible.  For 
instance,  I  can  believe  that  the  dryads 
are  plenty  this  summer:  my  garden  is 
like  an  ash-heap.  Almost  all  the  mois 
ture  it  has  had  in  weeks  has  been  the 
sweat  of  honest  industry. 

The  pleasure  of  gardening  in  these 
days,  when  the  thermometer  is  at  ninety, 
is  one  that  I  fear  I  shall  not  be  able  to 
make  intelligible  to  my  readers,  many 
of  whom  do  not  appreciate  the  delight 
of  soaking  in  the  sunshine.  I  suppose 
that  the  sun,  going  through  a  man,  as  it 
will  on  such  a  day,  takes  out  of  him 
rheumatism,  consumption,  and  every 
other  disease,  except  sudden  death  — 
from  sun-stroke.  But,  aside  from  this, 
there  is  an  odor  from  the  evergreens, 
the  hedges,  the  various  plants  and  vines, 
that  is  only  expressed  and  set  afloat  at  a 


94  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

high  temperature,  which  is  delicious ; 
and,  hot  as  it  may  be,  a  little  breeze  will 
come  at  intervals,  which  can  be  heard  in 
the  tree-tops,  and  which  is  an  unobtru 
sive  benediction.  I  hear  a  quail  or  two 
whistling  in  the  ravine ;  and  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  fragmentary  conversation 
going  on  among  the  birds,  even  on  the 
warmest  days.  The  companionship  of 
Calvin,  also,  counts  for  a  good  deal.  He 
usually  attends  me,  unless  I  work  too 
long  in  one  place;  sitting  down  on  the 
turf,  displaying  the  ermine  of  his  breast, 
and  watching  my  movements  with  great 
intelligence.  He  has  a  feline  and  genu 
ine  love  for  the  beauties  of  Nature,  and 
will  establish  himself  where  there  is  a 
good  view,  and  look  on  it  for  hours.  He 
always  accompanies  us  when  we  go  to 
gather  the  vegetables,  seeming  to  be  de 
sirous  to  know  what  we  are  to  have  for 
dinner.  He  is  a  connoisseur  in  the  gar- 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  95 

den ;  being  fond  of  almost  all  the  vege 
tables,  except  the  cucumber, — a  dietetic 
hint  to  man.  I  believe  it  is  also  said 
that  the  pig  will  not  eat  tobacco.  These 
are  important  facts.  It  is  singular,  how 
ever,  that  those  who  hold  up  the  pigs  as 
models  to  us  never  hold  us  up  as  models 
to  the  pigs. 

I  wish  I  knew  as  much  about  natural 
history  and  the  habits  of  animals  as 
Calvin  does.  He  is  the  closest  observer 
I  ever  saw ;  and  there  are  few  species  of 
animals  on  the  place  that  he  has  not 
analyzed.  I  think  that  he  has,  to  use  a 
euphemism  very  applicable  to  him,  got 
outside  of  every  one  of  them,  except 
the  toad.  To  the  toad  he  is  entirely 
indifferent;  but  I  presume  he  knows 
that  the  toad  is  the  most  useful  animal 
in  the  garden.  I  think  the  Agricultural 
Society  ought  to  offer  a  prize  for  the 
finest  toad.  When  Polly  comes  to  sit  in 


96  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

the  shade  near  my  strawberry-beds,  to 
shell  peas,  Calvin  is  always  lying  near  in 
apparent  obliviousness ;  but  not  the 
slightest  unusual  sound  can  be  made  in 
the  bushes,  that  he  is  not  alert,  and  pre 
pared  to  investigate  the  cause  of  it.  It 
is  this  habit  of  observation,  so  cultivated, 
which  has  given  him  such  a  trained 
mind,  and  made  him  so  philosophical. 
It  is  within  the  capacity  of  even  the 
humblest  of  us  to  attain  this. 

And,  speaking  of  the  philosophical 
temper,  there  is  no  class  of  men  whose 
society  is  more  to  be  desired  for  this 
quality  than  that  of  plumbers.  They 
are  the  most  agreeable  men  I  know ; 
and  the  boys  in  the  business  begin  to  be 
agreeable  very  early.  I  suspect  the  se 
cret  of  it  is,  that  they  are  agreeable  by 
the  hour.  In  the  dryest  days,  my  foun 
tain  became  disabled :  the  pipe  was 
stopped  up.  A  couple  of  plumbers, 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  97 

with  the  implements  of  their  craft,  came 
out  to  view  the  situation.  There  was 
a  good  deal  of  difference  of  opinion 
about  where  the  stoppage  was.  I  found 
the  plumbers  perfectly  willing  to  sit 
down  and  talk  about  it,  —  talk  by  the 
hour.  Some  of  their  guesses  and  re 
marks  were  exceedingly  ingenious ;  and 
their  general  observations  on  other  sub 
jects  were  excellent  in  their  way,  and 
could  hardly  have  been  better  if  they 
had  been  made  by  the  job.  The  work 
dragged  a  little  —  as  it  is  apt  to  do  by 
the  hour.  The  plumbers  had  occasion  to 
make  me  several  visits.  Sometimes 
they  would  find,  upon  arrival,  that  they 
had  forgotten  some  indispensable  tool; 
and  one  would  go  back  to  the  shop,  a 
mile  and  a  half,  after  it ;  and  his  com 
rade  would  await  his  return  with  the 
most  exemplary  patience,  and  sit  down 
and  talk,  —  always  by  the  hour.  I  do 

7 


98  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

not  know  but  it  is  a  habit  to  have  some 
thing  wanted  at  the  shop.  They  seemed 
to  me  very  good  workmen,  and  always 
willing  to  stop  and  talk  about  the  job, 
or  any  thing  else,  when  I  went  near 
them.  Nor  had  they  any  of  that  im 
petuous  hurry  that  is  said  to  be  the 
bane  of  our  American  civilization.  To 
their  credit  be  it  said,  that  I  never  ob 
served  any  thing  of  it  in  them.  They 
can  afford  to  wait.  Two  of  them  will 
sometimes  wait  nearly  half  a  day  while 
a  comrade  goes  for  a  tool.  They  are 
patient  and  philosophical.  It  is  a  great 
pleasure  to  meet  such  men.  One  only 
wishes  there  was  some  work  he  could  do 
for  them  by  the  hour.  There  ought  to 
be  reciprocity.  I  think  they  have  very 
nearly  solved  the  problem  of  Life  :  it  is 
to  work  for  other  people,  never  for 
yourself,  and  get  your  pay  by  the  hour. 
You  then  have  no  anxiety,  and  little 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   G  A  It  DEN.  90 

work.  If  you  do  things  by  the  job. 
you  are  perpetually  driven :  the  hours 
are  scourges.  If  you  work  by  the  hour, 
you  gently  sail  on  the  stream  of  Time, 
which  is  always  bearing  you  on  to  the 
haven  of  Pay,  whether  you  make  any  ef 
fort,  or  not.  Working  by  the  hour  tends 
to  make  one  moral.  A  plumber  working 
by  the  job,  trying  to  unscrew  a  rusty, 
refractory  nut,  in  a  cramped  position, 
where  the  tongs  continually  slipped  off, 
would  swear ;  but  I  never  heard  one  of 
them  swear,  or  exhibit  the  least  impa 
tience  at  such  a  vexation,  working  by  the 
hour.  Nothing  can  move  a  man  who  is 
paid  by  the  hour.  How  sweet  the  flight 
of  time  seems  to  his  calm  mind ! 


100  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 


TWELFTH  WEEK. 

"A  /TR.  HORACE  GREELEY,  the  intro- 
_1_V_L  duction  of  whose  name  confers  an 
honor  upon  this  page  (although  I  ought 
to  say  that  it  is  used  entirely  without 
his  consent),  is  my  sole  authority  in 
agriculture.  In  politics,  I  do  not  dare  to 
follow  him ;  but  in  agriculture  he  is  irre 
sistible.  When,  therefore,  I  find  him  ad 
vising  Western  farmers  not  to  hill  up  their 
corn,  I  think  that  his  advice  must  be  po 
litical.  You  must  hill  up  your  corn. 
People  always  have  hilled  up  their  corn. 
It  would  take  a  constitutional  amend 
ment  to  change  the  practice,  that  has 
pertained  ever  since  maize  was  raised. 
"  It  will  stand  the  drought  better,"  says 
Mr.  Greeley, "  if  the  ground  is  left  level/' 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  101 

I  have  corn  in  my  garden,  ten  and 
twelve  feet  high,  strong  and  lusty , 
standing  the  drought  like  a  grenadier ; 
and  it  is  hilled.  In  advising  this  rad 
ical  change,  Mr.  Greeley  evidently  has 
a  political  purpose.  He  might  just  as 
well  say  that  you  should  not  hill  beans, 
when  everybody  knows  that  a  "  hill  of 
beans"  is  one  of  the  most  expressive 
symbols  of  disparagement.  When  I  be 
come  too  lazy  to  hill  my  corn,  I,  too,  shall 
go  into  politics. 

I  am  satisfied  that  it  is  useless  to  try 
to  cultivate  "  pusley."  I  set  a  little  of 
it  one  side,  and  gave  it  some  extra  care. 
It  did  not  thrive  as  well  as  that  which  I 
was  fighting.  The  fact  is,  there  is  a  spirit 
of  moral  perversity  in  the  plant,  which 
makes  it  grow  the  more,  the  more  it  is 
interfered  with.  I  am  satisfied  of  that. 
I  doubt  if  any  one  has  raised  more 
"  pusley "  this  year  than  I  have ;  and 


102  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

my  warfare  with  it  has  been  continual. 
Neither  of  us  has  slept  much.  If  you 
combat  it,  it  will  grow,  to  use  an  ex 
pression  that  will  be  understood  by 
many,  like  the  devil.  I  have  a  neigh 
bor,  a  good  Christian  man,  benevolent, 
and  a  person  of  good  judgment.  He 
planted  next  to  me  an  acre  of  turnips 
recently.  A  few  days  after,  he  went  to 
look  at  his  crop ;  and  he  found  the  en 
tire  ground  covered  with  a  thick  and 
luxurious  carpet  of  "pusley,"  with  a 
turnip-top  worked  in  here  and  there  as 
an  ornament.  I  have  seldom  seen  so 
thrifty  a  field.  I  advised  my  neighbor 
next  time  to  sow  "  pusley ;  "  and  then  he 
might  get  a  few  turnips.  I  wish  there 
was  more  demand  in  our  city  markets 
for  "pusley"  as  a  salad.  I  can  recom 
mend  it. 

It  does  not  take  a  great  man  to  soon 
discover,  that,  in  raising  any  thing,  the 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  103 

greater  part  of  the  plants  goes  into  stalk 
and  leaf,  and  the  fruit  is  a  most  incon 
siderable  portion.  I  plant  and  hoe  a 
hill  of  corn  :  it  grows  green  and  stout, 
and  waves  its  broad  leaves  high  in  the 
air,  and  is  months  in  perfecting  itself, 
and  then  yields  us  not  enough  for  a 
dinner.  •  It  grows  because  it  delights  to 
do  so,  —  to  .take  the  juices  out  of  my 
ground,  to  absorb  my  fertilizers,  to  wax 
luxuriant,  and  disport  itself  in  the  sum 
mer  air,  and  with  very  little  thought  of 
making  any  return  to  me.  I  might  go 
all  through  my  garden  and  fruit-trees 
with  a  similar  result.  I  have  heard  of 
places  where  there  was  very  little  land 
to  the  acre.  It  is  universally  true,  that 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  vegetable  show 
and  fuss  for  the  result  produced.  I  do 
not  complain  of  this.  One  cannot 
expect  vegetables  to  be  better  than  men  : 
and  they  make  a  great  deal  of  osten- 


104  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEX. 

tatious  splurge  ;  and  many  of  them  come 
to  no  result  at  last.  *  Usually,  the  more 
show  of  leaf  and  wood,  the  less  fruit. 
This  melancholy  reflection  is  thrown  in 
here  in  order  to  make  dog-days  seem 
cheerful  in  comparison. 

One  of  the  minor  pleasures  of  life  is 
that  of  controlling  vegetable  activity 
and  aggressions  with  the  pruning-knife. 
Vigorous  and  rapid  growth  is,  however, 
a  necessity  to  the  sport.  To  prune 
feeble  plants  and  shrubs  is  like  acting 
the  part  of  dry-nurse  to  a  sickly  orphan. 
You  must  feel  the  blood  of  Nature  bound 
under  your  hand,  and  get  the  thrill  of 
its  life  in  your  nerves.  To  control  and 
culture  a  strong,  thrifty  plant,  in'  this 
way,  is  like  steering  a  ship  under,  full 
headway,  or  driving  a  locomotive  with 
your  hand  on  the  lever,  or  pulling  the 
reins  over  a  fast  horse  when  his  blood 
and  tail  are  up.  I  do  not  understand, 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  105 

by  the  way,  the  pleasure  of  the  jockey  in 
setting  up  the  tail  of  the  horse  artificial 
ly.  If  I  had  a  horse  with  a  tail  not 
able  to  sit  up,  I  should  feed  the  horse, 
and  curry  him  into  good  spirits,  and  let 
him  set  up  his  own  tail.  When  I  see  a 
poor,  spiritless  horse  going  by  with  an 
artificially  set-up  tail,  it  is  only  a  signal 
of  distress.  I  desire  to  be  surrounded 
only  by  healthy,  vigorous  plants  and 
trees,  which  require  constant  cutting-in 
and  management.  Merely  to  cut  away 
dead  branches  is  like  perpetual  attend 
ance  at  a  funeral,  and  puts  one  in  low 
spirits.  I  want  to  have  a  gafden  and 
orchard  rise  up  and  meet  me  every 
morning,  with  the  request  to  "  lay  on, 
Macduff."  I  respect  old  age  ;  but  an 
old  currant-bush,  hoary  with  mossy 
bark,  is  a  melancholy  spectacle. 

I  suppose  the  time  has  come  when  I 
am  expected   to   say  something   about 


106  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

fertilizers :  all  agriculturists  do.  When 
you  plant,  you  think  you  cannot  fertilize 
too  much  :  when  you  get  the  bills  for 
the  manure,  you  think  you  cannot  fer 
tilize  too  little.  Of  course,  you  do  not 
expect  to  get  the  value  of  the  manure 
back  in  fruits  and  vegetables ;  but 
something  is  due  to  science,  —  to  chem 
istry  in  particular.  You  must  have  a 
knowledge  of  soils,  must  have  your  soil 
analyzed,  and  then  go  into  a  course  of 
experiments  to  find  what  it  needs.  It 
needs  analyzing,  —  that,  I  am  clear 
about :  every  thing  needs  that.  You 
had  better  have  the  soil  analyzed  before 
you  buy  :  if  there  is  "  pusley  "  in  it,  let 
it  alone.  See  if  it  is  a  soil  that  requires 
much  hoeing,  and  how  fine  it  will  get 
if  there  is  no  rain  for  two  months.  But 
when  you  come  "to  fertilizing,  if  I  under 
stand  the  agricultural  authorities,  you 
open  a  pit  that  will  ultimately  swallow 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  107 

you  up,  —  farm  and  all.  It  is  the  great 
subject  of  modern  times,  how  to  fer 
tilize  without  ruinous  expense ;  how,  in 
short,  not  to  starve  the  earth  to  death 
while  we  get  our  living  out  of  it. 
Practically,  the  business  is  hardly  to  the 
taste  of  a  person  of  a  poetic  turn  of 
mind.  The  details  of  fertilizing  are  not 
agreeable.  Michael  Angelo,  who  tried 
every  art,  and  nearly  every  trade,  never 
gave  his  mind  to  fertilizing.  It  is  much 
pleasanter  and  easier  to  fertilize  with  a 
pen,  as  the  agricultural  writers  do,  than 
with  a  fork.  And  this  leads  me  to  say, 
that,  in  carrying  on  a  garden  yourself, 
you  must  have  a  "  consulting  "  gardener ; 
that  is,  a  man  to  do  the  heavy  and 
unpleasant  work.  To  such  a  man,  I  say, 
in  language  used  by  Demosthenes  to  the 
Athenians,  and  which  is  my  advice  to  all 
gardeners,  "Fertilize,  fertilize,  fertilize ! " 


108  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 


THIRTEENTH    WEEK. 

T  FIND  that  gardening  has  unsurpassed 
-^-  advantages  for  the  study  of  natural 
history;  and  some  scientific  facts  have 
come  under  my  own  observation,  which 
cannot  fail  to  interest  naturalists  and 
un-naturalists  in  about  the  same  degree. 
Much,  for  instance,  has  been  written 
about  the  toad,  an  animal  without  which 
no  garden  would  be  complete.  But 
little  account  has  been  made  of  his 
value :  the  beauty  of  his  eye  alone  has 
been  dwelt  on ;  and  little  has  been  said 
of  his  mouth,  and  its  important  function 
as  a  fly  and  bug  trap.  His  habits,  and 
even  his  origin,  have  been  misunder 
stood.  Why,  as  an  illustration,  are 
toads  so  plenty  after  a  thunder-shower  ? 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  109 

All  my  life  long,  no  one  has  been  able 
to  answer  me  that  question.  Why 
after  a  heavy  shower,  and  in  the  midst 
of  it,  do  such  multitudes,  of  toads,  espe 
cially  little  ones,  hop  about  on  the  gravel- 
walks?  For  many  years,  I  believed  that 
they  rained  down;  and  I  suppose  many 
people  think  so  still.  They  are  so  small, 
and  they  come  in  such  numbers  only  in 
the  shower,  that  the  supposition  is  not 
a  violent  one.  "  Thick  as  toads  after  a 
shower,"  is  one  of  our  best  proverbs. 
I  asked  an  explanation  of  this  of  a 
thoughtful  woman,  —  indeed,  a  leader  in 
the  great  movement  to  have  all  the 
toads  hop  in  any  direction,  without  any 
distinction  of  sex  or  religion.  Her 
reply  was,  that  the«  toads  come  out 
during  the  shower  to  get  water.  This, 
however,  is  not  the  fact.  I  have  dis 
covered  that  they  come  out  not  to  get 
water.-  I  deluged  a  dry  flower-bed,  the 


110  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

other  night,  with  pailful  after  pailful  of 
water.  Instantly  the  toads  came  out 
of  their  holes  in  the  dirt,  by  tens  and 
twenties  and  fifties,  to  escape  death  by 
drowning.  The  big  ones  fled  away  in  a 
ridiculous  streak  of  hopping;  and  the 
little  ones  sprang  about  in  the  wildest 
confusion.  The  toad  is  just  like  any 
other  land  animal :  when  his  house  is 
full  of  water,  he  quits  it.  These  facts, 
with  the  drawings  of  the  water  and  the 
toads,  are  at  the  service  of  the  distin 
guished  scientists  of  Albany  in  New 
York,  who  were  so  much  impressed  by 
the  Cardiff  Giant. 

The  domestic  cow  is  another  animal 
whose  ways  I  have  a  chance  to  study, 
and  also  to  obliterate  in  the  garden. 
One  of  my  neighbors  has  a  cow,  but  no 
land  ;  and  he  seems  desirous  to  pasture 
her  on  the  surface  of  the  land  of  other 
people  :  a  very  reasonable  desire.  The 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  Ill 

man  proposed  that  he  should  be  allowed 
to  cut  the  grass  from  my  grounds  for 
his  cow.  I  knew  the  cow,  having  often 
had  her  in  my  garden;  knew  her  gait 
and  the  size  of  her  feet,  which  struck 
me  as  a  little  large  for  the  size  of  the 
body.  Having  no  co'w  myself,  but 
acquaintance  with  my  neighbor's,  I  told 
him  that  I  thought  it  would  be  fair  for 
him  to  have  the  grass.  He  was,  there 
fore,  to  keep  the  grass  nicely  cut,  and 
to  keep  his  cow  at  home.  I  waited 
some  time  after  the  grass  needed  cut 
ting  ;  and,  as  my  neighbor  did  not  ap 
pear,  J:  hired  it  cut.  No  sooner  was  it 
done,  than  he  promptly  appeared,  and 
raked  up  most  of  it,  and  carried  it  away. 
He  had  evidently  been  waiting  that 
opportunity.  When  the  grass  grew 
again,  the  neighbor  did  not  appear  with 
his  scythe ;  but  one  morning  I  found  the 
.cow  tethered  on  the  sward,  hitched  near 


112  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

the  clothes-horse,  a  short  distance  from 
the  house.  This  seemed  to  be  the 
man's  idea  of  the  best  way  to  cut  the 
grass.  I  disliked  to  have  the  cow  there, 
because  I  knew  her  inclination  to  pull  up 
the  stake,  and  transfer  her  field  of  mow 
ing  to  the  garden,  but  especially 
because  of  her  voice.  She  has  the  most 
melancholy  "  moo  "  I  ever  heard.  It 
is  like  the  wail  of  one  un-infallible,  ex 
communicated,  and  lost.  It  is  a  most 
distressing  perpetual  reminder  of  the 
brevity  of  life  and  the  shortness  of 
feed.  It  is  unpleasant  to  the  family. 
We  sometimes  hear  it  in  the  middle  of 
the  night,  breaking  the  silence  like  a 
suggestion  of  coming  calamity.  It  is  as 
bad  as  the  howling  of  a  dog  at  a  funeral. 
I  told  the  man  about  it;  but  he 
seemed  to  think  that  he  was  not  respon 
sible  for  the  cow's  voice.  I  then  told 
him  to  take  her  away;  and  he  did,  at) 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  113 

intervals,  shifting  her  to  different  parts 
of  the  grounds  in  my  absence,  so  that 
the  desolate  voice  would '  startle  us  from 
unexpected  quarters.  If  I  were  to  un 
hitch  the  cow,  and  turn  her  loose,  I 
knew  where  she  would  go.  If  I  were 
to  lead  her  away,  the  question  was, 
Where  ?  for  I  did  not  fancy  leading  a 
cow  about  till  I  could  find  somebody 
who  was  willing  to  pasture  her.  To  this 
dilemma  had  my  excellent  neighbor 
reduced  me.  But  I  found  him,  one 
Sunday  morning,  —  a  day  when  it  would 
not  do  to  get  angry,  — tying  his  cow  at 
the  foot  of  the  hill ;  the  beast  all  the 
time  going  on  in  that  abominable  voice. 
I  told  the  man  that  I  could  not  have  the 
cow  in  the  grounds.  He  said,  "  All  right, 
boss ; "  but  he  did  not  go  away.  I 
asked  him  to  clear  out.  The  man,  who 
is  a  French  sympathizer  from  the  Re 
public  of  Ireland,  kept  his  temper  per- 


114  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

fectly.  He  said  he  wasn't  doing  any 
thing,  just  feeding  his  cow  a  bit :  he 
wouldn't  make  me  the  least  trouble  in 
the  world.  I  reminded  him  that  he  had 
been  told  again  and  again  not  to  come 
here ;  that  he  might  have  all  the  grass, 
but  he  should  not  bring  his  cow  upon 
the  premises.  The  imperturbable  man 
assented  to  every  thing  that  I  said,  and 
kept  on  feeding  his  cow.  Before  I 
got  him  to  go  to  fresh  scenes  and  pas 
tures  new,  the  sabbath  was  almost 
broken :  but  it  was  saved  by  one  thing ; 
it  is  difficult  to  be  emphatic  when  no 
one  is  emphatic  on  the  other  side.  The 
man  and  his  cow  have  taught  me  a 
great  lesson,  which  I  shall  recall  when  I 
keep  a  cow.  I  can  recommend  this  cow, 
if  anybody  wants  one,  as  a  steady 
boarder,  whose  keeping  will  cost  the 
owner  little ;  but,  if  her  milk  is  at  all 
like  her  voice,  those  who  drink  it  are  on 
the  straight  road  to  lunacy. 


MY  SUMMER  IX  A   GARDEN.  115 

I  think  I  have  said  that  we  nave  a 
game-preserve.  We  keep  quails,  or  try 
to,  in  the  thickly  wooded,  bushed,  and 
brushed  ravine.  This  bird  is  a  great 
favorite  with  us,  dead  or  alive,  on  ac 
count  of  its  tasteful  plumage,  its  tender 
flesh,  its  domestic  virtues,  and  its 
pleasant  piping.  Besides,  although  I 
appreciate  toads  and  cows,  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing,  I  like  to  have  a  game- 
preserve  more  in  the  English  style. 
And  we  did.  For  in  July,  while  the 
game-law  was  on,  and  the  young  quails 
were  coming  on,  we  were  awakened  one 
morning  by  firing,  —  musketry  -  firing, 
close  at  hand.  My  first  thought  was, 
that  war  was  declared ;  but,  as  I  should 
never  pay  much  attention  to  war  de 
clared  at  that  time  in  the  morning,  I 
went  to  sleep  again.  But  the  occurrence 
was  repeated,  —  and  not  only  early  in 
the  morning,  but  at  night.  There  was 


116  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

calling  of  dogs,  breaking  down  of  brush, 
and  firing  of  guns.  It  is  hardly  pleasant 
to  have  guns  fired  in  the  direction  of 
the  house,  at  your  own  quails.  The 
hunters  could  be  sometimes  seen,  but 
never  caught.  Their  best  time  was 
about  sunrise ;  but,  before  one  could 
dress  and  get  to  the  front,  they  would 
retire. 

One  morning,  about  four  o'clock,  I 
heard  the  battle  renewed.  I  sprang 
up,  but  not  in  arms,  and  went  to  a 
window.  Polly  (like  another  "blessed 
damozel")  flew  to  another  window, — 

"  The  blessed  damozel  leaned  out 
From  the  gold  bar  of  heaven,"  — 

and     reconnoitred     from     behind     the 

• 

blinds. 

"  The  wonder  was  not  yet  quite  gone 
From  that  still  look  of  hers," 

when  an  armed  man  and  a  legged  dog 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN.  117 

appeared  in  the  opening.     I  was  vigi 
lantly  watching  him. 

"  And  now 
She  spoke  through  the  still  weather." 

"  Are  you  afraid  to  speak  to  him  ?  " 
asked  Tolly.  Not  exactly, 

"  she  spoke  as  when 
The  stars  sang  in  their  spheres." 

Stung  by  this  inquiry,  I  leaned  out 
of  the  window  till 

"  The  bar  /  leaned  on  (was)  warm," 

and  cried,  — 

"  Halloo,  there !  What  are  you  do- 
ing?" 

"  Look  out  he  don't  shoot  you,"  called 
out  Polly  from  the  other  window,  sud 
denly  going  on  another  tack. 

I  explained,  that  a  sportsman  would 
not  be  likely  to  shoot  a  gentleman  in 
his  own  house,  with  bird-shot,  so  long 
as  quails  were  to  be  had. 


118  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

"  You  have  no  business  here :  what 
are  you  after  ?  "  I  repeated. 

"Looking  for  a  lost  hen/'  said  the 
man  as  he  strode  away. 

The  reply  was  so  satisfactory  and 
conclusive,  that  I  shut  the  blinds,  and 
went  to  bed. 

But  one  evening  I  overhauled  one  of 
the  poachers.  Hearing  his  dog  in  the 
thicket,  I  rushed  through  the  brush,  and 
came  in  sight  of  the  hunter  as  he  was 
retreating  down  the  road.  He  came 
to  a  halt ;  and  we  had  some  conversation 
in  a  high  key.  Of  course,  I  threatened 
to  prosecute  him.  I  believe  that  is  the 
thing  to  do  in  such  cases;  but  how  I 
was  to  do  it,  when  I  did  not  know  his 
name  or  ancestry,  and  couldn't  see  his 
face,  never  occurred  to  me.  (I  remem 
ber,  now,  that  a  farmer  once  proposed 
to  prosecute  me  when  I  was  fishing  in  a 
trout-brook  on  his  farm,  and  asked  my 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  119 

name  for  that  purpose.)  He  said  lie 
should  smile  to  see  me  prosecute  him. 

"  You  can't  do  it  :  there  ain't  no 
notice  up  about  trespassing."  This  view 
of  the  common  law  impressed  me ;  and 
I  said,  — 

"  But  these  are  private  grounds." 

"  Private  h — !  "  was  all  his  response. 

You  can't  argue  much  with  a  man 
who  has  a  gun  in  his  hands,  when  you 
have  none.  Besides,  it  might  be  a 
needle-gun,  for  aught  I  knew.  I  gave 
it  up,  and  we  separated. 

There  is  this  disadvantage  about  hav 
ing  a  game-preserve  attached  to  your 
garden  :  it  makes  life  too  lively. 


120  UY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 


FOURTEENTH  WEEK. 

~TN  these  golden  latter  August  days,  Na- 
-•-  ture  has  come  to  a  serene  equilibrium. 
Having  flowered  and  fruited,  she  is  en 
joying  herself.  I  can  see  how  things 
are  going :  it  is  a  down-hill  business  after 
this ;  but,  for  the  time  being,  it  is  like 
swinging  in  a  hammock,  —  such  a  deli 
cious  air,  such  a  graceful  repose !  I  take 
off  my  hat  as  I  stroll  into  the  garden 
and  look  about ;  and  it  does  seem  as  if 
Nature  had  sounded  a  truce.  I  didn't 
ask  for  it.  I  went  out  with  a  hoe ; 
but  the  serene,  sweetness  disarms  me. 
Thrice  is  he  armed  who  has  a  long- 
handled-hoe,  with  a  double  blade.  Yet 
to-day  I  am  almost  ashamed  to  appear 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  121 

in  such  a  belligerent  fashion,  with  this 
terrible  mitrailleuse  of  gardening. 

The  tomatoes  are  getting  tired  of 
ripening,  and  are  beginning  to  go  into  a 
worthless  condition,  —  green.  The  cu 
cumbers  cumber  the  ground,  —  great  yel 
low,  over-ripe  objects,  no  more  to  be  com 
pared  to  the  crisp  beauty  of  their  youth 
than  is  the  fat  swine  of  the  sty  to  the 
clean  little  pig.  The  nutmeg-melons, 
having  covered  themselves  with  deli 
cate  lace-work,  are  now  ready  to  leave 
the  vine.  I  know  they  are  ripe  if  they 
come  easily  off  the  stem. 

Moral  Observations. — You  can  tell 
when  people  are  ripe  by  their  willing 
ness  to  let  go.  Kichness  and  ripeness 
are  not  exactly  the  same.  The. rich  are 
apt  to  hang  to  the  stem  with  tenacity. 
I  have  nothing  against  the  rich.  If  I 
were  not  virtuous,  I  should  like  to  be 
rich.  But  we  cannot  have  every  thing, 


122  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

as  tlie  man  said  when  he  was  down  with 
small-pox  and  cholera,  and  the  yellow- 
fever  came  into  the  neighborhood. 

Now,  the  grapes,  soaked  in  this  liquid 
gold,  called  air,  begin  to  turn,  mindful 
of  the  injunction,  "  to  turn  or  burn." 
The  clusters  under  the  leaves  are  getting 
quite  purple,  but  look  better  than  they 
taste.  I  think  there  is  no  danger  but 
they  will  be  gathered  as  soon  as  they  are 
ripe.  One  of  the  blessings  of  having  an 
open  garden  is,  that  I  do  not  have  to 
watch  my  fruit :  a  dozen  youngsters  do 
that,  and  let  it  waste  no  time  after 
it  matures.  I  wish  it  were  possible  to 
grow  a  variety  of  grape  like  the  explo 
sive  bullets,  that  should  explode  in  the 
stomach :  the  vine  would  make  such  a 
nice  border  for  the  garden,  —  a  masked 
battery  of  grape.  The  pears,  too,  are 
getting  russet  and  heavy;  and  here  and 
there  amid  the  shining  leaves,  one 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  123 

gleams  as  ruddy  as  the  cheek  of  the 
Nutbrown  Maid.  The  Flemish  Beauties 
come  off  readily  from  the  stein,  if  I  take 
them  in  my  hand :  they  say  all  kinds  of 
beauty  come  off  by  handling. 

The  garden  is  peace  as  much  as  if  it 
were  an  empire.  Even  the  man's  cow 
lies  down  under  the  tree  where  the  man 
has  tied  her,  with  such  an  air  of  content 
ment,  that  I  have  small  desire  to  disturb 
her.  She  is  chewing  my  cud  as  if  it 
were  hers.  Well,  eat  on  and  chew  on, 

* 

melancholy  brute.  I  have  not  the  heart 
to  tell  the  man  to  take  you  away  :  and  it 
would  do  no  good  if  I  had ;  he  wouldn't 
do  it.  The  man  has  not  a  taking  way. 
Munch  on,  ruminant  creature.  The  frost 
will  soon  come  ;  the  grass  will  be  brown. 
T  will  be  charitable  while  this  blessed  lull 
continues ;  for  our  benevolences  must 
soon  be  turned  to  other  and  more  distant 
objects, — the  amelioration  of  the  concli- 


124  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

tion  of  the  Jews,  the  education  of  the 
ological  young  men  in  the  West,  and 
the  like. 

I  do  not  know  that  these  appearances 
are  deceitful;  but  I  sufficiently  know 
that  this  is  a  wicked  world,  to  be  glad 
that  I  have  taken  it  on  shares.  In  fact, 
I  could  not  pick  the  pears  alone,  not  to 
speak  of  eating  them.  When  I  climb 
the  trees,  and  throw  down  the  dusky 
fruit,  Polly  catches  it  in  her  apron ;  near 
ly  always,  however,  letting  go  when  it 
drops,  the  fall  is  so  sudden.  The  sun 
gets  in  her  face ;  and,  every  time  a  pear 
comes  down,  it  is  a  surprise,  like  having 
a  tooth  out,  she  says. 

"  If  I  couldn't  hold  an  apron  better 
than  that !  " —  But  the  sentence  is  not 
finished  :  it  is  useless  to  finish  that  sort 
of  a  sentence  in  this  delicious  weather. 
Besides,  conversation  is  dangerous.  As, 
for  instance,  towards  evening  I  am  pre- 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  125 

paring  a  bed  for  a  sowing  of  turnips,  — • 
not  that  I  like  turnips  in  the  least ;  but 
this  is  the  season  to  sow  them.  Polly 
comes  out,  and  extemporizes  her  usual 
seat  to  "  consult  me "  about  matters 
while  I  work.  I  well  know  that  some 
thing  is  coming. 

"  This  is  a  rotation  of  crops,  isn't  it  ?  " 

"  Yes :  I  have  rotated  the  gone-to-seed 
lettuce  off,  and  expect  to  rotate  the  tur 
nips  in  ;  it  is  a  political  fashion." 

"  Isn't  it  a  shame  that  the  tomatoes 
are  all  getting  ripe  at  once  ?  What  a 
lot  of  squashes  !  I  wish  we  had  an  oys 
ter-bed.  Do  you  want  me  to  help  you 
any  more  than  I  am  helping  ?  " 

"  No,  I  thank  you."  (I  wonder  what 
all  this  is  about  ?) 

"  Don't  you  think  we  could  sell  some 
strawberries  next  year  ?  " 

"  By  all  means,  sell  any  thing.  We 
shall  no  doubt  get  rich  out  of  this  acre." 


126  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

"Don't  be  foolish." 

And  now ! 

"  Don't  you  think  it  would  be  nice 
to  have  a?"—  And  Polly  unfolds  a 
small  scheme  of  benevolence,  which  is 
not  quite  enough  to  break  me,  and  is 
really  to  be  executed  in'  an  economical 
manner.  "  Wouldn't  that  be  nice  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes  !  And  where  is  the  money 
to  come  from  ?  " 

"  I  thought  we  had  agreed  to  sell  the 
strawberries." 

"  Certainly.  But  I  think  we  would 
make  more  money  if  we  sold  the  plants 


now." 


"Well,"  said  Polly,  concluding  the 
whole  matter,  "  I  am  going  to  do  it." 
And,  having  thus  "  consulted  "  me,  Polly 
goes  away;  and  I  put  in  the  turnip- 
seeds  quite  thick,  determined  to  raise 
enough  to  sell.  But  not  even  this  mer 
cenary  thought  can  ruffle  my  mind  as  I 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN.  127 

rake  off  the  loamy  bed.  I  notice,  how 
ever,  that  the  spring  smell  has  gone  out 
of  the  dirt.  That  went  into  the  first 
crop. 

In  this  peaceful  unison  with  yielding 
nature,  I  was  a  little  taken  aback  to 
find  that  a  new  enemy  had  turned  up. 
The  celery  had  just  rubbed  through  the 
fiery  scorching  of  the  drought,  and 
stood  a  faint  chance  to  grow ;  when  I 
noticed  on  the  green  leaves  a  big>  green- 
and-black  worm,  called,  I  believe,  the 
celery-worm :  but  I  don't  know  who 
called  him  ;  I  am  sure  I  did  not.  It  was 
almost  ludicrous  that  he  should  turn  up 
here,  just  at  the  end  of  the  season,  when 
I  supposed  that  my  war  with  the  living 
animals  was  over.  Yet  he  was,  no 
doubt,  predestinated  ;  for  he  went  to 
work  as  cheerfully  as  if  he  had  arrived 
in  June,  when  every  thing  was  fresh 
and  vigorous.  It  beats  me  —  Nature 


128  '    MI  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

does.  I  doubt  not,  that,  if  I  were  to 
leave  my  garden  now  for  a  week,  it 
wouldn't  know  me  on  my  return.  The 
patch  I  scratched  over  for  the  turnips, 
and  left  as  clean  as  earth,  is  already  fall 
of  ambitious  "pusley,"  which  grows 
with  all  the  confidence  of  youth  and  the 
skill  of  old  age.  It  beats  the  serpent 
as  an  emblem  of  immortality.  While 
all  the  others  of  us  in  the  garden  rest 
and  sit-in  comfort  a  moment,  upon  the 
summit  of  the  summer,  it  is  as  rampant 
and  vicious  as  ever.  It  accepts  no 
armistice. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN.  129 


FIFTEENTH   WEEK. 

~"TT  is  said  that  absence  conquers  all 
r*-  things,  love  included  ;  but  it  has 
a  contrary  effect  on  a  garden.  I  was 
absent  for  two  or  three  weeks.  I  left 
my  garden  a  paradise,  as  paradises 
go  in  this  protoplastic  world ;  and,  when 
I  returned,  the  trail  of  the  serpent  was 
over  it  all,  so  to  speak.  (This  is  in 
addition  to  the  actual  snakes  in  it,  which 
are  large  enough  to  strangle  children  of 
average  size.)  I  asked  Polly  if  she  had 
seen  to  the  garden  while  I  was  away, 
and  she  said  she  had.  I  found  that  all 
the  melons  had  been  seen  to,  and  the 
early  grapes  and  pears.  The  green 
worm  had  also  seen  to  about  half  the 
celery ;  and  a  large  flock  of  apparently 


130  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

perfectly  domesticated  chickens  were 
roaming  over  the  ground/  gossiping  in 
the  hot  September  sun,  and  picking  up 
any  odd  trifle  that  might  be  left.  On 
the  whole,  the  garden  could  not  have 
been  better  seen  to ;  though  it  would 
take  a  sharp  eye  to  see  the  potato-vines 
amid  the  rampant  grass  and  weeds. 

The  new  strawberry-plants,  for  one 
thing,  had  taken  advantage  of  my  ab 
sence.  Every  one  of  them  had  sent  out 
as  many  scarlet  runners  as  an  Indian 
tribe  has.  Some  of  them  had  blossomed  ; 
and  a  few  had  gone  so  far  as  to  bear 
ripe  berries,  —  long,  pear-shaped  fruit, 
hanging  like  the  ear-pendants  of  an 
East-Indian  bride.  I  could  not  bat 
admire  the  persistence  of  these  zealous 
plants,  which  seemed  determined  to 
propagate  themselves  both  by  seeds 
and  roots,  and  make  sure  of  immortality 
in  some  way.  Even  the  Colfax  variety 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  131 

was  as  ambitious  as  the  others.  After 
having  seen  the  declining  letter  of  Mr. 
Colfax,  I  did  not  suppose  that  this  vine 
would  run  any  more,  and  intended  to 
root  it  out.  But  one  can  never  say 
what  these  politicians  mean  ;  and  I  shall 
let  this  variety  grow  until  after  the 
next  election,  at  least ;  although  I  hear 
that  the  fruit  is  small,  and  rather  sour. 
If  there  is  any  variety  of  strawberries 
that  really  declines  to  run,  and  devotes 
itself  to  a  private  life  of  fruit-bearing,  I 
should  like  to  get  it.  I  may  mention 
here,  since  we  are  on  politics,  that  the 
Doolittle  raspberries  had  sprawled  all 
over  the  strawberry-beds :  so  true  is  it 
that  politics  makes  strange  bed-fellows. 

But- another  enemy  had  come  into  the 
strawberries,  which,  after  all  that  has 
been  said  in  these  papers,  I  am  almost 
ashamed  to  mention.  But  does  the 
preacher  in  the  pulpit,  Sunday  after 


132  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

Sunday,  year  after  year,  shrink  from 
speaking  of  sin  ?  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the 
greatest  enemy  of  mankind,  "  p-sl-y." 
The  ground  was  carpeted  with  it.  I 
should  think  that  this  was  the  tenth 
crop  of  the  season ;  and  it  was  as  good 
as  the  first.  I  see  no  reason  why  our 
northern  soil  is  not  as  prolific  as  that  of 
the  tropics,  and  will  not  produce  as 
many  crops  in  the  year.  The  mistake 
we  make  is  in  trying  to  force  things 
that  are  not  natural  to  it.  I  have  no 
doubt,  that,  if  we.  turn  our  attention  to 
"  pusley,"  we  can  beat  the  world. 

I  had  no  idea,  until  recently,  how 
generally  this  simple  and  thrifty  plant  is 
feared  and  hated.  Far  beyond  what  I 
had  regarded  as  the  bounds  of  civiliza 
tion,  it  is  held  as  one  of  the  mysteries 
of  a  fallen  world ;  accompanying  the 
home  missionary  on  his  wanderings,  and 
preceding  the  footsteps  of  the  Tract 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN-.  133 

Society.  I  was,  not  long  ago,  in  the 
Adirondacks.  We  had  built  a  camp  for 
the  night,  in  the  heart  of  the  woods, 
high  up  on  John's  Brbok,  and  near  the 
foot  of  Mount  Marcy :  I  can  see  the 
lovely  spot  now.  It  was  on  the  bank  of 
the  crystal,  rocky  stream,  at  the  foot  of 
high  and  slender  falls,  which  poured 
into  a  broad  amber  basin.  Out  of  this 
basin  we  had  just  taken  trout  enough 
for  our  supper,  which  had  been  killed, 
and  roasted  over  the  fire  on  sharp  sticks, 
and  eaten  before  they  had  an  opportu 
nity  to  feel  the  chill  of  this  deceitful 
world.  "We  were  lying  under  the  hut 
of  spruce-bark,  on  fragrant  hemlock- 
boughs,  talking,  after  supper.  In  front 
of  us  was  a  huge  fire  of  birch-logs ;  and 
over  it  we  could  see  the  top  of  the  falls 
glistening  in  the  moonlight ;  and  the 
roar  of  the  falls,  and  the  brawling  of  the 
stream  near  us,  filled  all  the  ancient 


134  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

woods.  It  was  a  scene  upon  which  one 
would  think  no  thought  of  sin  could 
enter.  We  were  talking  with  old 
Phelps,  the  guide.  Old  Phelps  is  at 
once  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend.  He 
knows  the  woods  and  streams  and  moun 
tains,  and  their  savage  inhabitants,  as 
well  as  we  know  all  our  rich  relations, 
and  what  they  are  doing  ;  and,  in  lonely 
bear-hunts  and  sable-trappings,  he  has 
thought  out  and  solved  most  of  the 
problems  of  life.  As  he  stands  in  his 
wood-gear,  he  is  as  grizzly  as  an  old  cedar- 
tree  ;  and  he  speaks  in  a  high  falsetto 
voice,  which  would  be  invaluable  to  a 
boatswain  in  a  storm  at  sea. 

We  had  been  talking  of  all  subjects 
about  which  rational  men  are  interest 
ed,  —  bears,  panthers,  trapping,  the  hab 
its  of  trout,  the  tariff,  the  internal  revenue 
(to  wit,  the  injustice  of  laying  such  a  tax 
on  tobacco,  and  none  on  dogs :  "  There 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  135 

ain't  no  dog  in  the  United  States,"  says 
the  guide,  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  "  that 
earns  his  living  "),  the  Adventists,  the 
Gorner  Grat,  Horace  Greeley,  religion, 
the  propagation  of  seeds  in  the  wilder 
ness  (as,  for  instance,  where  were  the 
seeds  lying  for  ages  that  spring  up  into 
certain  plants  and  flowers  as  soon  as  a 
spot  is  cleared  anywhere  in  the  most 
remote  forest ;  and  why  does  a  growth 
of  oak-trees  always  come  up  after  a 
growth  of  pine  has  been  removed  ?)  — 
in  short,  we  had  pretty  nearly  reached  a 
solution  of  many  mysteries,  when  Phelps 
suddenly  exclaimed  with  uncommon 
energy,  — 

"  Wall,  there's  one  thing  that  beats 
me !  " 

"What's  that?"  we  asked  with  un 
disguised  curiosity. 

"  That's  '  pusley ' !  "  he  replied,  in  the 
tone  of  a  man  who  has  come  to  one 


136  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

door  in  life  which  is  hopelessly  shut,  and 
from  which  he  retires  in  despair. 

"  Where  it  comes  from  I  don't  know, 
nor  what  to  do  with  it.  It's  in  my 
garden;  and  I  can't  get  rid  of  it.  It 
beats  me." 

About  "  pusley "  the  guide  had  no 
theory  and  no  hope.  A  feeling  of  awe 
came  over  me,  as  we  lay  there  at  mid 
night,  hushed  by  the  sound  of  the 
stream  and  the  rising  wind  in  the  spruce- 
tops.  Then,  man  can  go  nowhere  that 
"  pusley  "  will  not  attend  him.  Though 
he  camp  on  the  Upper  Au  Sable,  or 
penetrate  the  forest  where  rolls  the 
Allegash,  and  hears  no  sound  save  his 
own  allegations,  he  will  not  escape  it. 
It  has  entered  the  happy  valley  of 
Keene,  although  there  is  yet  no  church 
there,  and  only  a  feeble  school  part  of 
the  year.  Sin  travels  faster  than  they 
that  ride  in  chariots.  I  take  my  hoe, 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  137 

and  begin ;  but  I  feel  that  I  am  warring 
against  something  whose  roots  take  hold 
onll. 

By  the  time  a  man  gets  to  be  eighty, 
he  learns  that  he  is  compassed  by  limi 
tations,  and  that  there  has  been  a 
natural  boundary  set  to  his  individual 
powers.  As  he  goes  on  in  life,  he  begins 
to  doubt  his  ability  to  destroy  all  evil 
and  to  reform  all  abuses,  and  to  suspect 
that  there  will  be  much  left  to  do  after 
he  has  done.  I  stepped  into  my  garden 
in  the  spring,  not  doubting  that  I  should 
be  easily  master  of  the  weeds.  I  have 
simply  learned  that  an  institution  which 
is  at  least  six  thousand  years  old,  and  I 
believe  six  millions,  is  not  to  be  put 
down  in  one  season. 

I  have  been  digging  my  potatoes,  if 
anybody  cares  to  know  it.  I  planted 
them  in  what  are  called  "  Early  Kose,"  — 
the  rows  a  little  less  than  three  feet 


138  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

apart ;  but  the  vines  came  to  an  early 
close  in  the  drought.  Digging  potatoes 
is  a  pleasant,  soothing  occupation,  but 
not  poetical.  It  is  good  for  the  mind, 
unless  they  are  too  small  (as  many  of 
mine  are) ;  when  it  begets  a  want  of 
gratitude  to  the  bountiful  earth.  What 
small  potatoes  we  all  are,  compared 
with  what  we  might  be  !  We  don't 
plough  deep  enough,  any  of  us,  for  one 
thing.  I  shall  put  in  the  plough  next 
year,  and  give  the  tubers  room  enough. 
I  think  they  felt  the  lack  of  it  this  year : 
many  of  them  seemed  ashamed  to  come 
out  so  small.  There  is  great  pleasure  in 
turning  out  the  brown-jacketed  fellows 
into  the  sunshine  of  a  royal  September 
day,  and  seeing  them  glisten  as  they  lie 
thickly  strewn  on  the  warm  soil.  Life  has 
few  such  moments.  But  then  they  must 
be  picked  up.  The  picking-up,  in  this 
world,  is  always  the  unpleasant  part  of  it. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  139 


SIXTEENTH  WEEK. 

I  DO  not  hold  myself  bound  to  answer 
the  question,  Does  gardening  pay? 
It  is  so  difficult  to  define  what  is  meant  by 
paying.  There  is  a  popular  notion,  that, 
unless  a  thing  pays,  you  had  better  let 
it  alone ;  and  I  may  say  that  there  is  a 
public  opinion  that  will  not  let  a  man  or 
woman  continue  in  the  indulgence  of  a 
fancy  that  does  not  pay.  And  public 
opinion  is  stronger  than  the  legislature, 
and  nearly  as  strong  as  the  ten  com 
mandments:  I  therefore  yield  to  popu 
lar  clamor  when  I  discuss  the  profit  of 
my  garden. 

As  I  look  at  it,  you  might  as  well  ask, 
Does  a  sunset  pay  ?  I  know  that  a  sun 
set  is  commonly  looked  on  as  a  cheap 


140  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

entertainment;  but  it  is  really  one  of 
the  most  expensive.  It  is  true  that  we 
can  all  have  front  seats,  and  we  do  not 
exactly  need  to  dress  for  it  as  we  do  for 
the  opera;  but  the  conditions  under 
which  it  is  to  be  enjoyed  are  rather 
dear.  Among  them  I  should  name  a 
good  suit  of  clothes,  including  some 
trifling  ornament,  —  not  including  back 
hair  for  one  sex,  or  the  parting  of  it  in 
the  middle  for  the  other.  I  should  add 
also  a  good  dinner,  well  cooked  and  di 
gestible ;  and  the  cost  of  a  fair  educa 
tion,  extended,  perhaps,  through  genera 
tions  in  which  sensibility  and  love  of 
beauty  grew.  What  I  mean  is,  that  if 
a  man  is  hungry  and  naked,  and  half  a 
savage,  or  with  the  love  of  beauty  un 
developed  in  him,  a  sunset  is  thrown 
away  on  him :  so  that  it  appears  that  the 
conditions  of  the  enjoyment  of  a  sunset 
are  as  costly  as  any  thing  in  our  civili 
zation. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN.  141 

Of  course,  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
absolute  value  in  this  world.  You  can 
only  estimate  what  a  thing  is  worth  to 
you.  Does  gardening  in  a  city  pay? 
You  might  as  well  ask  if  it  pays  to  keep 
hens,  or  a  trotting-horse,  or  to  wear  a 
gold  ring,  or  to  keep  your  lawn  cut,  or 
your  hair  cut.  It  is  as  you  like  it.  In 
a  certain  sense,  it  is  a  sort  of  profana 
tion  to  consider  if  my  garden  pays,  or 
to  set  a  money-value  upon  my  delight 
in  it.  I  fear  that  you  could  not  put  it 
in  money.  Job  had  the  right  idea  in  his 
mind,  when  he  asked,  "  Is  there  any 
taste  in  the  white  of  an  egg  ? "  Sup 
pose  there  is  not !  What !  shall  I  set  a 
price  upon  the  tender  asparagus  or  the 
crisp  lettuce,  which  made  the  sweet 
spring  a  reality  ?  Shall  I  turn  into  mer 
chandise  the  red  strawberry,  the  pale 
green  pea,  the  high-flavored  raspberry, 
the  sanguinary  beet,  that  love-plant  the 


142  3/7  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

tomato,  and  the  corn  which  did  not 
waste  its  sweetness  on  the  desert  air, 
but,  after  flowing  in  a  sweet  rill  through 
all  our  summer  life,  mingled  at  last  with 
the  engaging  bean  in  a  pool  of  succo 
tash  ?  Shall  I  compute  in  figures  what 
daily  freshness  and  health  and  delight 
the  garden  yields,  let  alone  the  large 
crop  of  anticipation  I  gathered  as  soon 
as  the  first  seeds  got  above  ground  ? 
I  appeal  to  any  gardening  man  of  sound 
mind,  if  that  which  pays  him  best  in 
gardening  is  not  that  which  he  cannot 
show  in  his  trial-balance.  Yet  I  yield 
to  public  opinion,  when  I  proceed  to 
make  such  a  balance ;  and  I  do  it  with 
the  utmost  confidence  in  figures. 

I  select  as  a  representative  vegetable, 
in  order  to  estimate  the  cost  of  garden 
ing,  the  potato.  In  my  statement,  I 
shall  not  include  the  interest  on  the 
value  of  the  land.  I  throw  in  the  land, 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  143 

because  it  would  otherwise  have  stood 
idle  :  the  thing  generally  raised  on  city 
land  is  taxes.  I  therefore  make  the  fol 
lowing  statement  of  the  cost  and  income 
of  my  potato-crop,  a  part  of  it  esti 
mated  in  connection  with  other  garden 
labor.  I  have  tried  to  make  it  so  as  to 
satisfy  the  income-tax  collector  :  — 

Dr. 

Ploughing  ..........................  $0.50 

Seed  ................................  1.50 

Manure  .............................  8.00 

Assistance  in  planting  and  digging,  3  days  6.75 
Labor  of  self  in  planting,  hoeing,  digging, 

picking  up,  5  days  at  17  cents  ........  .85 


Total  cost  .......................    $17.60 


Two  thousand  five  hundred  mealy  potatoes, 

at  2  cents  ..........................    $50.00 

Small  potatoes  given  to  neighbor's  pig  ...          .50 

Total  return  .....................    $50.50 

Balance,  profit  in  cellar  ............    $32.90 

Some  of  these  items   need    explana 
tion.     I  have  charged   nothing   for  my 


144  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

own  time  waiting  for  the  potatoes  to 
grow.  My  time  in  hoeing,  fighting 
weeds,  &c.,  is  put  in  at  five  days :  it 
may  have  been  a  little  more.  Nor  have 
I  put  in  any  thing  for  cooling  drinks 
while  hoeing.  I  leave  this  out  from 
principle,  because  I  always  recommend 
water  to  others.  I  had  some  difficulty 
in  fixing  the  rate  of  my  own  wages.  It 
was  the  first  time  that  I  had  an  oppor 
tunity  of  paying  what  I  thought  labor 
was  worth ;  and  I  determined  to  make 
a  good  thing  of  it  for  once.  I  figured 
it  right  down  to  European  prices, — 
seventeen  cents  a  day  for  unskilled  la 
bor.  Of  course,  I  boarded  myself.  I 
ought  to  say  that  I  fixed  the  wages 
after  the  work  was  done,  or  I  might 
have  been  tempted  to  do  as  some  ma 
sons  did  who  worked  for  me  at  four 
dollars  a  day.  They  lay  in  the  shade 
and  slept  the  sleep  of  honest  toil  full 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  145 

half  the  time,  —  at  least  all  the  time 
I  was  away.  I  have  reason  to  believe, 
that  when  the  wages  of  mechanics  are 
raised  to  eight  and  ten  dollars  a  day, 
the  workmen  will  not  come  at  all :  they 
will  merely  send  their  cards. 

I  do  not  see  any  possible  fault  in  the 
above  figures.  I  ought  to  say  that  I  de 
ferred  putting  a  value  on  the  potatoes 
until  I  had  footed  up  the  debit  column. 
This  is  always  the  safest  way  to  do.  I 
had  twenty-five  bushels.  I  roughly  es 
timated  that  there  are  one  hundred 
good  ones  to  the  bushel.  Making  my 
own  market-price,  I  asked  two  cents 
apiece  for  them.  This.  I  should  have 
considered  dirt  cheap  last  June,  when  I 
was  going  down  the  rows  with  the  hoe. 
If  any  one  thinks  that  two  cents  each  is 
high,  let  him  try  to  raise  them. 

Nature  is  "awful  smart."  I  intend  to 
be  complimentary  in  saying  so.  She 
10 


146  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

shows  it  in  little  things.  I  have  men 
tioned  my  attempt  to  put  in  a  few  mod 
est  turnips,  near  the  close  of  the  season. 
I  sowed  the  seeds,  by  the  way,  in  the  most 
liberal  manner.  Into  three  or  four  short 
rows  I  presume  I  put  enough  to  sow  an 
acre  ;  and  they  all  came  up,  —  came 
up  as  thick  as  grass,  as  crowded  and 
useless  as  babies  in  a  Chinese  village. 
Of  course,  they  had  to  be  thinned  out ; 
that  is,  pretty  much  all  pulled  up ;  and 
it  took  me  a  long  time ;  for  it  takes  a 
conscientious  man  some  time  to  decide 
which  are  the  best  and  healthiest  plants 
to  spare.  After  all,  I  spared  too  many. 
That  is  the  great  danger  everywhere  in 
this  world  (it  may  not  be  in  the  next) ; 
things  are  too  thick :  we  lose  all  in  grasp 
ing  for  too  much.  The  Scotch  say,  that 
no  man  ought  to  thin  out  his  own  tur 
nips,  because  he  will  not  sacrifice  enough 
to  leave  room  for  the  remainder  to  grow : 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  147 

lie  should  get  his  neighbor,  who  does  not 
care  for  the  plants,  to  do  it.  But  this  is 
mere  talk,  and  aside  from  the  point :  if 
there  is  any  thing  I  desire  to  avoid  in 
these  agricultural  papers,  it  is  digression. 
I  did  think,  that  putting  in  these  tur 
nips  so  late  in  the  season,  when  general 
activity  has  ceased,  and  in  a  remote  part 
of  the  garden,  they  would  pass  un 
noticed.  But  Nature  never  even  winks, 
as  I  can  see.  The  tender  blades  were 
scarcely  out  of  the  ground,  when  she 
sent  a  small  black  fly,  which  seemed  to 
have  been  born  and  held  in  reserve  for 
this  purpose,  —  to  cut  the  leaves.  They 
speedily  made  lace-work  of  the  whole 
bed.  Thus  every  thing  appears  to  have 
its  special  enemy,  —  except,  perhaps, 

p y :  nothing  ever  troubles  that. 

Did  the  Concord  Grape  ever  come  to 
more  luscious  perfection  than  this  year  ? 
or  yield  so  abundantly  ?  The  golden 


148  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

sunshine  has  passed  into  them,  and  dis 
tended  their  purple  skins  almost  to 
bursting.  Such  heavy  clusters!  such 
bloom !  such  sweetness  !  such  meat  and 
drink  in  their  round  globes!  What  a 
fine  fellow  Bacchus  would  have  been,  if 
he  had  only  signed  the  pledge  when  he 
was  a  young  man!  I  have  taken  off 
clusters  that  were  as  compact  and  al 
most  as  large  as  the  Black  Hamburgs. 
It  is  slow  work  picking  them.  I  do  not 
see  how  the  gatherers  for  the  vintage 
ever  get  off  enough.  It  takes  so  long 
to  disentangle  the  bunches  from  the 
leaves,  and  the  interlacing  vines,  and  the 
supporting  tendrils ;  and  then  I  like  to 
hold  up  each  bunch  and  look  at  it  in  the 
sunlight,  and  get  the  fragrance  tmd  the 
bloom  of  it,  and  show  it  to  Polly,  who  is 
making  herself  useful,  as  taster  and  com 
panion,  at  the  foot  of  the  ladder,  before 
dropping  it  into  the  basket.  But  we 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  140 

have  other  company.  The  robin,  the 
most  knowing  and  greedy  bird  out  of 
paradise  (I  trust  he  will  always  be  kept 
out),  has  discovered  that  the  grape-crop 
is  uncommonly  good,  and  has  come  back, 
with  his  whole  tribe  and  family,  larger 
than  it  was  in  pea-time.  He  knows  the 
ripest  bunches  as  well  as  anybody,  and 
tries  them  all.  If  he  would  take  a  whole 
bunch  here  and  there,  say  half  the  num 
ber,  and  be  off  with  it,  I  should  not  so 
much  care.  But  he  will  not.  He  pecks 
away  at  all  the  bunches,  and  spoils  as 
many  as  he  can.  It  is  time  he  went 
south. 

There  is  no  prettier  sight,  to  my  eye, 
than  a  gardener  on  a  ladder  in  his  grape- 
arbor,  in  these  golden  days,  selecting 
the  heaviest  clusters  of  grapes,  and 
handing  them  down  to  one  and  another 
of  a  group  of  neighbors  and  friends,  who 
stand  under  the  shade  of  the  leaves, 


150  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

flecked  with  the  sunlight,  and  cry,  "  How 
sweet!"  "What  nice  ones!"  and  the 
like,  —  remarks  encouraging  to  the  man 
on  the  ladder.  It  is  great  pleasure  to 
see  people  eat  grapes. 

Moral  Truth.  — I  have  no  doubt  that 
grapes  taste  best  in  other  peoples' 
mouths.  It  is  an  old  notion  that  it  is 
easier  to  be  generous  than  to  be  stingy. 
I  am  convinced  that  the  majority  of  peo 
ple  would  be  generous  from  selfish  mo 
tives,  if  they  had  the  opportunity. 

Philosophical  Observation.  — Nothing 
shows  one  who  his  friends  are,  like  pros 
perity  and  ripe  fruit.  I  had  a  good 
friend  in  the  country,  whom  I  almost 
never  visited  except  in  cherry-time. 
By  your  fruits  you  shall  know  them. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  151 


SEVENTEENTH  WEEK. 

T  like  to  go  into  the  garden  these 
-*-  warm  latter  days,  and  muse.  To  muse 
is  to  sit  in  the  sun,  and  not  think  of 
any  thing.  I  am  not  sure  but  goodness 
comes  out  of  people  who  bask  in  the 
sun,  as  it  does  out  of  a  sweet  apple 
roasted  before  the  fire.  The  late  Sep 
tember  and  October  sun  of  this  latitude 
is  something  like  the  sun  of  extreme 
Lower  Italy  :  you  can  stand  a  good  deal 
of  it,  and  apparently  soak  a  winter  sup 
ply  into  the  system.  If  one  only  could 
take  in  his  winter  fuel  in  this  way  !  The 
next  great  discovery  will,  very  likely,  be 
the  conservation  of  sunlight.  In  the 
correlation  of  forces,  I  look  to  see  the 
day  when  the  superfluous  sunshine  will 


152  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

be  utilized ;  as,  for  instance,  that  which 
has  burned  up  my  celery  this  year  will 
be  converted  into  a  force  to  work  the 
garden.  % 

This  sitting  in  the  sun  amid  the 
evidences  of  a  ripe  year  is  the  easiest 
part  of  gardening  I  have  experienced. 
But  what  a  combat  has  gone  on  here ! 
What  vegetable  passions  have  run  the 
whole  gamut  of  ambition,  selfishness, 
greed  of  place,  fruition,  satiety,  and  now 
rest  here  in  the  truce  of  exhaustion ! 
What  a  battle-field,  if  one  may  look 
upon  it  so  !  The  corn  has  lost  its  ammu 
nition,  and  stacked  arms,  in  a  slovenly, 
militia  sort  of  style.  The  ground  vines 
are  torn,  trampled,  and  withered ;  and 
the  ungathered  cucumbers,  worthless 
melons,  and  golden  squashes,  lie  about 
like  the  spent  bombs  and  exploded 
shells  of  a  battle-field.  So  the  cannon- 
balls  lay  on  the  sandy  plain  before  Fort 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  153 

Fisher,  after  the  capture.  So  the  great, 
grassy  meadow  at  Munich,  any  morning 
during  the  October  Fest,  is  strewn  with 
the  empty  beer-mugs.  History  con 
stantly  repeats  itself.  There  is  a  large 
crop  of  moral  reflections  in  my  garden, 
which  anybody  is  at  liberty  to  gather 
who  passes  this  way. 

I  have  tried  to  get  in  any  thing  that 
offered  temptation  to  sin.  There  would 
be  no  thieves  if  there  was  nothing  to 
steal ;  and  I  suppose,  in  the  thieves' 
catechism,  the  provider  is  as  bad  as  the 
thief;  and,  probably,  I  am  to  blame  for 
leaving  out  a  few  winter-pears,  which 
some  predatory  boy  carried  off  on  Sun 
day.  At  first,  I  was  angry,  and  said  I 
should  like  to  have  caught  the  urchin  in 
the  act ;  but,  on  second  thought,  I  was 
glad  I  did  not.  The  interview  could 
not  have  been  pleasant.  I  shouldn't 
have  known  what  to  do  with  him.  The 


154  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

chances  are,  that  he  would  have  escaped 
away  with  his  pockets  full,  and  jibed  at 
me  from  a  safe  distance.  And,  if  I  had 
got  my  hands  on  him,  I  should  have 
been  still  more  embarrassed.  If  I  had 
flogged  him,  he  would  have  got  over  it 
a  good  deal  sooner  than  I  should.  That 
sort  of  boy  does  not  mind  castigation 
any  more  than  he  does  tearing  his 
trousers  in  the  briers.  If  I  had  treated 
him  with  kindness,  and  conciliated  him 
with  grapes,  showing  him  the  enormity 
of  his  offence,  I  suppose  he  would  have 
come  the  next  night,  and  taken  the  re 
mainder  of  the  grapes.  The  truth  is, 
that  the  public  morality  is  lax  on  the 
subject  of  fruit.  If  anybody  puts 
arsenic  or  gunpowder  into  his .  water 
melons,  he  is  universally  denounced  as 
a  stingy  old  murderer  by  the  commu 
nity.  A  great  many  people  regard 
growing  fruit  as  lawful  prey,  who  would 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  155 

not  think  of  breaking  into  your  cellar  to 
take  it.  I  found  a  man  once  in  my 
raspberry-bushes,  early  in  the  season, 
when  we  were  waiting  for  a  dish-full  to 
ripen.  Upon  inquiring  what  he  was 
about,  he  said  he  was  only  eating  some  ; 
and  the  operation  seemed  to  be  so  natu 
ral  and  simple,  that  I  disliked  to  disturb 
him.  And  I  am  not  very  sure  that  one 
has  a  right  to  the  whole  of  an  abundant 
crop  of  fruit  until  he  has  gathered  it. 
At  least,  in  a  city  garden,  one  might  as 
well  conform  his  theory  to  the  practice 
of  the  community. 

As  for  children  (and  it  sometimes 
looks  as  if  the  chief  products  of  my 
garden  were  small  boys  and  hens),  it  is 
admitted  that  they  are  barbarians.  There 
is  no  exception  among  them  to  this 
condition  of  barbarism.  This  is  not  to 
say  that  they  are  not  attractive ;  for 
they  have  the  virtues  as  well  as  the 


I 

156  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

vices  of  a  primitive  people.  It  is  held 
by  some  naturalists,  that  the  child  is 
only  a  zoophyte,  with  a  stomach,  and 
feelers  radiating  from  it  in  search  of 
something  to  fill  it.  It  is  true  that  a 
child  is  always  hungry  all  over :  but  he 
is  also  curious  all  over ;  and  his  curiosity  is 
excited  about  as  early  as  his  hunger. 
He  immediately  begins  to  put  out  his 
moral  feelers  into  the  unknown  and  the 
infinite  to  discover  what  sort  of  an 
existence  this  is  into  which  he  has  come. 
His  imagination  is  quite  as  hungry  as 
his  stomach.  And  again  and  again  it  is 
stronger  than  his  other  appetites.  You 
can  easily  engage  his  imagination  in  a 
story  which  will  make  him  forget  his 
dinner.  He  is  credulous  and  supersti 
tious,  and  open  to  all  wonder.  In  this, 
he  is  exactly  like  the  savage  races. 
Both  gorge  themselves  on  the  marvel 
lous  ;  and  all  the  unknown  is  marvellous 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.       ^    157 

to  them.  I  know  the  general  impression 
is,  that  children  must  be  governed 
through  their  stomachs.  I  think  they 
can  be  controlled  quite  as  well  through 
their  curiosity ;  that  being  the  more  crav 
ing  and  imperious  of  the  two.  I  have 
seen  children  follow  about  a  person  who 
told  them  stories,  and  interested  them 
with  his  charming  talk,  as  greedily  as  if 
his  pockets  had  been  full  of  bon-bons. 

Perhaps  this  fact  has  no  practical  re 
lation  to  gardening ;  but  it  occurs  to 
me,  that,  if  I  should  paper  the  outside  of 
my  high  board  fence  with  the  leaves  of 
"  The  Arabian  Nights,"  it  would  afford  me 
a  good  deal  of  protection,— more,  in  fact, 
than  spikes  in  the  top,  which  tear  trou 
sers,  and  encourage  profanity,  but  do  not 
save  much  fruit.  A  spiked  fence  is  a 
challenge  to  any  boy  of  spirit.  But,  if 
the  fence  were  papered  with  fairy-tales, 
would  he  not  stop  to  read  them  until  it 


158      %        MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

was  too  late  for  him  to  climb  into  the 
garden?  I  don't  know.  Human  nature 
is  vicious.  The  boy  might  regard  the 
picture  of  the  garden  of  the  Hesperi- 
des  only  as  an  advertisement  of  what 
was  over  the  fence.  I  begin  to  find  that 
the  problem  of  raising  fruit  is  nothing 
to  that  of  getting  it  after  it  has  matured. 
So  long  as  the  law,  just  in  many  re 
spects,  is  in  force  against  shooting  birds 
and  small  boys,  the  gardener  may  sow  in 
tears  and  reap  in  vain. 

The  power  of  a  boy  is,  to  me,  some 
thing  fearful.  Consider  what  he  can  do. 
You  buy  and  set  out  a  choice  pear- 
tree  ;  you  enrich  the  earth  for  it ;  you 
train  and  trim  it,  and  vanquish  the 
borer,  and  watch  its  slow  growth.  At 
length  it  rewards  your  care  by  produ 
cing  two  or  three  pears,  which  you  cut 
up  and  divide  in  the  family,  declaring 
the  flavor  of  the  bit  you  eat  to  be  some- 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN.  159 

tiling  extraordinary.  The  next  year, 
the  little  tree  blossoms  full,  and  sets 
well ;  and  in  the  autumn  has  on  its  slen 
der,  drooping  limbs  half  a  bushel  of 
fruit,  daily  growing  more  delicious  in  the 
sun.  You  show  it  to  your  friends,  read 
ing  to  them  the  French  name,  which  you 
can  never  remember,  on  the  label ;  and 
you  take  an  honest  pride  in  the  success 
ful  fruit  of  long  care.  That  night  your 
pears  shall  be  required  of  you  by  a  boy  ! 
Along  comes  an  irresponsible  urchin, 
who  has'  not  been  growing  much  longer 
than  the  tree,  with  not  twenty -five  cents' 
worth  of  clothing  on  him,  and  in  five 
minutes  takes  off  every  pear,  and  retires 
into  safe  obscurity.  In  five  minutes,  the 
remorseless  boy  has  undone  your  work 
of  years,  and  with  the  easy  nonchalance, 
I  doubt  not,  of  any  agent  of  fate,  in 
whose  path  nothing  is  sacred  or  safe. 
And  it  is  not  of  much  consequence. 


160  MY  SUMMER  IN  A  GARDEN. 

The  boy  goes  on  his  way,  —  to  Congress, 
or  to  State  Prison :  in  either  place  he 
will  be  accused  of  stealing,  perhaps 
wrongfully.  You  learn,  in  time,  that  it 
is  better  to  have  had  pears  and  lost 
them,  than  not  to  have  had  pears  at  all. 
You  come  to  know  that  the  least  (and 
rarest)  part  of  the  pleasure  of  raising 
fruit  is  the  vulgar  eating  it.  You 
recall  your  delight  in  conversing  with 
the  nurseryman,  and  looking  at  his  il 
lustrated  catalogues,  where  all  the  pears 
are  drawn  perfect  in  form,  and  of  extra 
size,  and  at  that  exact  moment  between 
ripeness  and  decay  which  it  is  so  impos 
sible  to  hit  in  practice.  Fruit  cannot  be 
raised  on  this  earth  to  taste  as  you 
imagine  those  pears  would  taste.  For 
years  you  have  this  pleasure,  unalloyed 
by  any  disenchanting  reality.  How  you 
watch  the  tender  twigs  in  spring,  and 
the  freshly-forming  bark,  hovering  about 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  161 

the  healthy  growing  tree  with  your 
pruning-knife  many  a  sunny  morning ! 
That  is  happiness.  Then,  if  you  know 
it,  you  are  drinking  the  very  wine  of 
life ;  and  when  the  sweet  juices  of  the 
earth  mount  the  limbs,  and  flow  down 
the  tender  stem,  ripening  and  reddening 
the  pendent  fruit,  you  feel  that  you 
somehow  stand  at  the  source  of  things, 
and  have  no  unimportant  share  in  the 
processes  of  Nature.  Enter,  at  this  mo 
ment,  boy  the  destroyer,  whose  office 
is  that  of  preserver  as  well ;  for,  though 
he  removes  the  fruit  from  your  sight,  it 
remains  in  your  memory  immortally  ripe 
and  desirable.  The  gardener  needs  all 
these  consolations  of  a  high  philosophy. 


11 


162  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 


EIGHTEENTH  WEEK. 

EGRETS  are  idle;  yet  history  is 
one  long  regret.  Every  thing 
might  have  turned  out  so  differently ! 
If  Ravaillac  had  not  been  imprisoned 
for  debt,  he  would  not  have  stabbed 
Henry  of  Navarre.  If  William  of 
Orange  had  escaped  assassination  by 
Philip's  emissaries;  if  France  had  fol 
lowed  the  French  Calvin,  and  embraced 
Protestant  Calvinism,  as  it  came  very 
near  doing  towards  the  end  of  the  six 
teenth  century  ;  if  the  Continental 
ammunition  had  not  given  out  at  Bun 
ker's  Hill ;  if  Blucher  had  not  "  come 
up"  at  Waterloo  —  the  lesson  is,  that 
things  do  not  come  up  unless  they  are 
planted.  When  you  go  behind  the  his- 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  163 

torical  scenery,  you  find  there  is  a  rope 
and  pulley  to  effect  every  transforma 
tion  which  has  astonished  you.  It  was 
the  rascality  of  a  minister  and  a  con 
tractor  five  years  before  that  lost  the 
battle ;  and  the  cause  of  the  defeat  was 
worthless  ammunition.  I  should  like  to 
know  how  many  wars  have  been  caused 
by  fits  of  indigestion,  and  how  many 
more  dynasties  have  been  upset  by  the 
love  of  woman  than  by  the  hate  of 
man.  It  is  only  because  we  are  ill  in 
formed  that  any  thing  surprises  us ; 
and  we  are  disappointed  because  we 
expect  that  for  which  we  have  not  pro 
vided. 

I  had  too  vague  expectations  of  what 
my  garden  would  do  of  itself.  A 
garden  ought  to  produce  one  every 
thing, — just  as  a  business  ought  to  sup 
port  a  man,  and  a  house  ought  to  keep 
itself.  We  had  a  convention  lately  to 


164  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDE X. 

resolve  that  the  house  should  keep 
itself;  but  it  won't.  There  has  been  a 
lively  time  in  our  garden  this  summer ; 
but  it  seems  to  me  there  is  very  little  to 
show  for  it.  It  has  been  a  terrible 
campaign ;  but  where  is  the  indemnity  ? 
Where  are  all  "  sass "  and  Lorraine  ? 
It  is  true  that  we  have  lived  on  the 
country ;  but  we  desire,  besides,  the 
fruits  of  the  war.  There  are  no  onions, 
for  one  thing.  I -am  quite  ashamed  to 
take  people  into  my  garden,  and  have 
them  notice  the  absence  of  onions.  It 
is  very  marked.  In  onion  is  strength ; 
and  a  garden  without  it  lacks  flavor. 
The  onion  in  its  satin  wrappings  is 
among  the  most  beautiful  of  vegetables ; 
and  it  is  the  only  one  that  represents 
the  essence  of  things.  It  can  almost  be 
said  to  have  a  soul.  You  take  off  coat 
after  coat,  and  the  onion  is  still  there ; 
and,  when  the  last  one  is  removed,  who 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  165 

dare  say  that  the  onion  itself  is  de 
stroyed,  though  you  can  weep  over  its 
departed  spirit?  If  there  is  any  one 
thing  on  this  fallen  earth  that  the  angels 
in  heaven  weep  over  more  than  another, 
it  is  the  onion. 

I  know  that  there  is  supposed  to  be  a 
prejudice  against  the  onion  ;  but  I 
think  there  is  rather  a  cowardice  in 
regard  to  it.  I  doubt  not  that  all  men 
and  women  love  the  onion  ;  but  few 
"confess  their  love.  Affection  for  it  is 
concealed.  Good  New-England ers  are 
as  shy  of  owning  it  as  they  are  of  talk 
ing  about  religion.  Some  people  have 
days  on  which  they  eat  onions,  —  what 
you  might  call  "retreats/'  or  their 
"Thursdays."  The  act  is  in  the  nature 
of  a  religious  ceremony,  an  Eleusinian 
mystery:  not  a  breath  of  it  must  get 
abroad.  On  that  day,  they  see  no 
company ;  they  deny  the  kiss  of  greet- 


1C6  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

ing  to  the  dearest  friend ;  they  retire 
within  themselves,  and  hold  communion 
with  one  of  the  most  pungent  and  pene 
trating  manifestations  of  the  moral 
vegetable  world.  Happy  is  said  to  be 
the  family  which  can  eat  onions  to 
gether.  They  are,  for  the  time  being, 
separate  from  the  world,  and  have  a 
harmony  of  aspiration.  There  is  a  hint 
here  for  the  reformers.  Let  them 
become  apostles"  of  the  onion ;  let  them 
eat,  and  preach  it  to  their  fellows,  and 
circulate  tracts  of  it  in  the  form  of 
seeds.  In  the  onion  is  the  hope  of 
universal  brotherhood.  If  all  men  will 
eat  onions  at  all  times,  they  will  come 
into  a  universal  sympathy.  Look  at 
Italy.  I  hope  I  am  not  mistaken  as  to 
the  cause  of  her  unity.  It  was  the 
Reds  who  preached  the  gospel  which 
made  it  possible.  All  the  Reds  of 
Europe,  all  the  sworn  devotees  of  the 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  167 

mystic  Mary  Ann,  eat  of  the  common 
vegetable.  Their  oaths  are  strong  with 
it.  It  is  the  food,  also,  of  the  common 
people  of  Italy.  All  the  social  atmos 
phere  of  that  delicious  land  is  laden 
with  it.  Its  odor  is  a  practical  democ 
racy.  In  the  churches  all  are  alike : 
there  is  one  faith,  one  smell.  The 
entrance  of  Victor  Emanuel  into  Eome 
is  only  the  pompous  proclamation  of  a 
unity  which  garlic  had  already  accom 
plished  ;  and  yet  we,  who  boast  of  our 
democracy,  eat  onions  in  secret. 

I  now  see  that  I  have  left  out  many 
of  the  most  moral  elements.  Neither 
onions,  parsnips,  carrots,  nor  cabbages 
are  here.  I  have  never  seen  a  garden 
in  the  autumn  before,  without  the  un 
couth  cabbage  in  it ;  but  my  garden 
gives  the  impression  of  a  garden  with 
out  a  head.  The  cabbage  is  the  rose  of 
Holland.  I  admire  the  force  by  which  it 


168  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

compacts  its  crisp  leaves  into  a  solid 
head.  The  secret  of  it  would  be  price 
less  to  the  world.  We  should  see  less 
expansive  foreheads  with  nothing  within. 
Even  the  largest  cabbages  are  not  always 
the  best.  But  I  mention  these  things, 
not  from  any  sympathy  I  have  with  the 
vegetables  named,  but  to  show  how  hard 
it  is  to  go  contrary  to  the  expectations 
of  society.  Society  expects  every  man 
to  have  certain  things  in  his  garden. 
Not  to  raise  cabbage  is  as  if  one  had  no 
pew  in  church.  Perhaps  we  shall  come 
some  day  to  free  churches  and  free  gar 
dens  ;  when  I  can  show  my  neighbor 
through  my  tired  garden,  at  the  end  of 
the  season,  when  skies  are  overcast,  and 
brown  leaves  are  swirling  down,  and  not 
mind  if  he  does  raise  his  eyebrows  when 
he  observes,  "Ah !  I  see  you  have  none  of 
this,  and  of  that."  At  present,  we  want 
the  moral  courage  to  plant  only  what  we 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  169 

need ;  to  spend  only  what  will  bring  us 
peace,  regardless  of  what  is  going  on 
over  the  fence.  We  are  half  ruined  by 
conformity ;  but  we  should  be  wholly 
ruined  without  it :  and  I  .presume  I  shall 
make  a  garden  next  year  that  will  be  as 
popular  as  possible. 

And  this  brings  me  to  what  I  see  may 
be  a  crisis  in  life.  I  begin  to  feel  the 
temptation  of  experiment.  Agriculture, 
horticulture,  floriculture, — -  these  are  vast 
fields,  into  which  one  may  wander  away, 
and  neve'r  be  seen  more.  It  seemed  to 
me  a  very  simple  thing,  this  gardening  ; 
but  it  opens  up  astonishingly.  It  is 
like  the  infinite  possibilities  in  worsted- 
work.  Polly  sometimes  says  to  me,  "  I 
wish  you  would  call  at  Bobbin's,  and 
match  that  skein  of  worsted  for  me  when 
you  are  in  town."  Time  was  I  used  to 
accept  such  a  commission  with  alacrity 
and  self-confidence.  I  went  to  Bobbin's, 


170  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

and  asked  one  of  his  young  men,  with 
easy  indifference,  to  give  me  some  of 
that.  The  young  man,  who  is  as  hand 
some  a  young  man  as  ever  I  looked  at, 
and  who  appears  to  own  the  shop,  and 
whose  suave  superciliousness  would  be 
worth  every  thing  to  a  cabinet  minister 
who  wanted  to  repel  applicants  for 
place,  says,  "  I  haven't  an  ounce  :  I  have 
sent  to  Paris,  and  I  expect  it  every  day. 
I  have  a  good  deal  of  difficulty  in  get 
ting  that  shade  in  my  assortment."  To 
think  that  he  is  in  communication  with 
Paris,  and  perhaps  with  Persia !  Ke- 
spect  for  such  a  being  gives  place  to  awe. 
I  go  to  another  shop,  holding  fast  to  my 
scarlet  clew.  There  I  am  shown  a  heap 
of  stuff,  with  more  colors  and  shades 
than  I  had  supposed  existed  in  all  the 
world.  What  a  blaze  of  distraction  !  I 
have  been  told  to  get  as  near  the  shade 
as  I  could  ;  and  so  I  compare  and  con- 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  171 

trast,  till  the  whole  thing  seems  to  me 
about  of  one  color.  But  I  can  settle  my 
mind  on  nothing.  The  affair  assumes  a 
high  degree  of  importance.  I  am  satis 
fied  with  nothing  but  perfection.  I 
don't  know  what  may  happen  if  the 
shade  is  not  matched.  I  go  to  another 
shop,  and  another,  and  another.  At  last 
a  pretty  girl,  who  could  make  any  cus 
tomer  believe  that  green  is  blue, 
matches  the  shade  in  a  minute.  I  buy 
five  cents'  worth.  That  was  the  order. 
Women  are  the  most  economical  persons 
that  ever  were.  I  have  spent  two  hours 
in  this  five-cent  business ;  but  who  shall 
say  they  were  wasted,  when  I  take  the 
stuff  home,  and  Polly  says  it  is  a  perfect 
match,  and  looks  so  pleased,  and  holds  it 
up  with  the  work,  at  arm's-length,  and 
turns  her  head  one  side,  and  then  takes 
her  needle,  and  works  it  in  ?  Working  in, 
I  can  see,  my  own  obligingness  and 


172  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

amiability  with  every  stitch.     Five  cents 
is  dirt  cheap  for  such  a  pleasure. 

The  things  I  may  do  in  my  garden 
multiply  on  my  vision.  How  fascinating 
have  the  catalogues  of  the  nurserymen 
become  !  Can  I  raise  all  those  beautiful 
varieties,  each  one  of  which  is  prefera 
ble  to  the  other?  Shall  I  try  all  the 
kinds  of  grapes,  and  all  the  sorts  of 
pears  ?  I  have  already  fifteen  varieties 
of  strawberries  (vines) ;  and  I  have  no 
idea  that  I  have  hit  the  right  one. 
Must  I  subscribe  to  all  the  magazines 
and  weekly  papers  which  offer  premiums 
of  the  best  vines  ?  Oh  that  all  the 
strawberries  were  rolled  into  one,  that  I 
could  enclose  all  its  lusciousness  in  one 
bite  !  Oh  for  the  good  old  days  when 
a  strawberry  was  a  strawberry,  and  there 
was  no  perplexity  about  it !  There  are 
more  berries  now  than  churches ;  and 
no  one  knows  what  to  believe.  I  have 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  173 

seen  gardens  which  were  all  experiment, 
given  over  to  every  new  thing,  and 
which  produced  little  or  nothing  to  the 
owners,  except  the  pleasure  of  expecta 
tion.  People  grow  pear-trees  at  great 
expense  of  time  and  money,  which  never 
yield  them  more  than  four  pears  to  the 
tree.  The  fashions  of  ladies'  bonnets 
are  nothing  to  the  fashions  of  nursery 
men.  He  who  attempts  to  follow  them 
has  a  business  for  life  ;  but  his  life  may 
be  short.  If  I  enter  upon  this  wide 
field  of  horticultural  experiment,  I  shall 
leave  peace  behind  ;  and  I  may  expect 
the  ground  to  open,  and  swallow  me  and 
all  my  fortune.  May  Heaven  keep  me 
to  the  old  roots  and  herbs  of  my  fore 
fathers  !  Perhaps,  in  the  world  of  mod 
ern  reforms,  this  is  not  possible ;  but  I 
intend  now  to  cultivate  only  the  stand 
ard  things,  and  learn  to  talk  knowingly 
of  the  rest.  Of  course,  one  must  keep 


174  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

up  a  reputation.  I  have  seen  people 
greatly  enjoy  themselves,  and  elevate 
themselves  in  their  own  esteem,  in  a 
wise  and  critical  talk  about  all  the 
choice  wines,  while  they  were  sipping  a 
decoction,  the  original  cost  of  which 
bore  no  relation  to  the  price  of  grapes. 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  175 


NINETEENTH  WEEK. 

ri^HE  closing  scenes  are  not  necessa- 
-*-  rily  funereal.  A  garden  should 
be  got  ready  for  winter  as  well  as  for 
summer.  When  one  goes  into  winter- 
quarters,  he  wants  every  thing  neat  and 
trig.  Expecting  high  winds,  we  bring 
every  thing  into  close  reef.  Some  men 
there  are  who  never  shave  (if  they  are 
so  absurd  as  ever  to  shave),  except  when 
they  go  abroad,  and  who  do  not  take 
care  to  wear  polished  boots  in  the  bosoms 
of  their  families.  I  like  a  man  who 
shaves  (next  to  one  who  doesn't  shave) 
to  satisfy  his  own  conscience,  and  not  for 
display,  and  who  dresses  as  neatly  at 
home  as  he  does  anywhere.  Such  a  man 
will  be  likely  to  put  his  garden  in  com- 


176  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

plete  order  before  the  snow  comes,  so 
that  its  last  days  shall  not  present  a  scene 
of  melancholy  ruin  and  decay. 

I  confess,  that,  after  such  an  exhaust 
ing  campaign,  I  felt  a  great  temptation 
to  retire,  and  call  it  a  drawn  engage 
ment.  But  better  counsels  prevailed. 
I  determined  that  the  weeds  should  not 
sleep  on  the  field  of  battle.  I  routed 
them  out,  and  levelled  their  works.  I  am 
master  of  the  situation.  If  I  have  made 
a  desert,  I  at  least  have  peace  ;  but  it  is 
not  quite  a  desert.  The  strawberries, 
the  raspberries,  the  celery,  the  turnips, 
wave  green  above  the  clean  earth,  with 
no  enemy  in  sight.  In  these  golden 
October  days,  no  work  is  more  fascinating 
than  this  getting  ready  for  spring.  The 
sun  is  no  longer  a  burning  enemy,  but  a 
friend,  illuminating  all  the  open  space, 
and  warming  the  mellow  soil.  And  the 
pruning  and  clearing-away  of  rubbish, 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  177 

and  the  fertilizing,  go  on  with  something 
of  the  hilarity  of  a  wake,  rather  than 
the  despondency  of  other  funerals. 
When  the  wind  begins  to  come  out  of 
the  north-west  of  set  purpose,  and  to 
sweep  the  ground  with  low  and  search 
ing  fierceness,  very  different  from  the 
roysteriiig,  jolly  bluster  of  early  fall,  I 
have  put  the  strawberries  under  their 
coverlet  of  leaves,  pruned  the  grape 
vines  and  laid  them  under  the  soil,  tied 
up  the  tender  plants,  given  the  fruit- 
trees  a  good,  solid  meal  about  the  roots ; 
and  so  I  turn  away,  writing  Resurgam 
on  the  gate-post.  And  Calvin,  aware 
that  the  summer  is  past  and  the  harvest 
is  ended,  and  that  a  mouse  in  the  kitchen 
is  worth  two  birds  gone  south,  scampers 
away  to  the  house  with  his  tail  in  the 
air. 

And  yet  I  am  not  perfectly  at  rest  in 
my  mind.     I  know  that  this  is  only  a 
12 


178  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

truce  until  the  parties  recover  their  ex 
hausted  energies.  All  winter  long,  the 
forces  of  chemistry  will  be  mustering 
under  ground,  repairing  the  losses,  call 
ing  up  the  reserves,  getting  new 
strength  from  my  surface  -  fertilizing 
bounty,  and  making  ready  for  the  spring 
campaign.  They  will  open  it  before  I 
am  ready :  while  the  snow  is  scarcely 
melted,  and  the  ground  is  not  passable, 
they  will  begin  to  move  on  my  works ; 
and  the  fight  will  commence.  Yet  how 
deceitfully  it  will  open  to  the  music  of 
birds  and  the  soft  enchantment  of  the 
spring  mornings  !  I  shall  even  be  per 
mitted  to  win  a  few  skirmishes :  the 
secret  forces  will  even  wait  for  me  to 
plant  and  sow,  and  show  my  full  hand, 
before  they  come  on  in  heavy  and  de 
termined  assault.  There  are  already 
signs  of  an  internecine  fight  with  the 
devil-grass,  which  has  intrenched  itself 


MY  SUMMER  IX  A   GARDEN.  179 

in  a  considerable  portion  of  my  garden- 
patch.  It  contests  the  ground  inch  by 
inch ;  and  digging  it  out  is  very  much 
such  labor  as  eating  a  piece  of  choke- 
cherry-pie  with  the  stones  all  in.  It  is 
work,  too,  that  I  know  by  experience  I 
shall  have  to  do  alone.  Every  man 
must  eradicate  his  own  devil-grass.  The 
neighbors  who  have  leisure  to  help  you 
in  grape-picking  time  are  all  busy  when 
devil-grass  is  most  aggressive.  My 
neighbors'  visits  are  well  timed :  it  is 
only  their  hens  which  have  all  seasons 
for  their  own. 

I  am  told  that  abundant  and  rank 
weeds  are  signs  of  a  rich  soil;  but  I 
have  noticed  that  a  thin,  poor  soil 
grows  little  but  weeds.  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  the  substratum  is  the  same, 
and  that  the  only  choice  in  this  world  is 
what  kind  of  weeds  you  will  have.  I 
am  not  much  attracted  by  the  gaunt, 


180  MY  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN. 

flavorless  mullein,  and  the  wiry  thistle 
of  upland  country  pastures,  where  the 
grass  is  always  gray,  as  if  the  world  were 
already  weary  and  sick  of  life.  The 
awkward,  uncouth  wickedness  of  remote 
country-places,  where  culture  has  died 
out  after  the  first  crop,  is  about  as  dis 
agreeable  as  the  ranker  and  richer  vice 
of  city  life,  forced  by  artificial  heat  and 
the  juices  of  an  overfed  civilization. 
There  is  110  doubt,  that,  on  the  whole, 
the  rich  soil  is  the  best :  the  fruit  of  it 
has  body  and  flavor.  To  what  affluence 
does  a  woman  (to  take  an  instance,  thank 
Heaven,  which  is  common)  grow,  with 
favoring  circumstances,  under  the  stim 
ulus  of  the  richest  social  and  intellec 
tual  influences  !  I  am  aware  that  there 
has  been  a  good  deal  said  in  poetry 
about  the  fringed  gentian  and  the  hare 
bell  of  rocky  districts  and  waysides,  and 
I  know  that  it  is  possible  for  maidens  to 


3/r  SUMMER  IN  A    GARDEN.  181 

bloom  in  very  slight  soil  into  a  wild- 
wood  grace  and  beauty ;  yet,  the  world 
through,  they  lack  that  wealth  of 
charms,  that  tropic  affluence  of  both 
person  and  .mind,  which  higher  and  more 
stimulating  culture  brings :  — the  pas 
sion  as  well  as  the-  soul  glowing  in  the 
Cloth-of-Gold  rose.  Neither  persons  nor 
plants  are  ever  fully  themselves  until 
they  are  cultivated  to  their  highest.  I, 
for  one,  have  no  fear  that  society  will  be 
too  much  enriched.  The  only  question 
is  about  keeping  down  the  weeds ;  and 
I  have  learned  by  experience,  that  we 
need  new  sorts  of  hoes,  and  more  dis 
position  to  use  them. 

Moral  Deduction.  — The  difference  be 
tween  soil  and  society  is  evident.  We 
bury  decay  in  the  earth ;  we  plant  in  it 
the  perishing ;  we  feed  it  with  offensive 
refuse  :  but  nothing  grows  out  of  it  that 
is  not  clean ;  it  gives  us  back  life  and 


182  MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN. 

beauty  for  our  rubbish.     Society  returns 
us  what  we  give  it. 

Pretending  to  reflect  upon  these 
things,  but,  in  reality,  watching  the  blue- 
jays,  who  are  pecking  at  the  purple  ber 
ries  of  the  woodbine  on  the  south  gable, 
I  approach  the  house.  Polly  is  picking 
up  chestnuts  on  the  sward,  regardless  of 
the  high  wind,  which  rattles  them  about 
her  head  and  upon  the  glass  roof  of  her 
winter-garden.  The  garden,  I  see,  is 
filled  with  thrifty  plants,  which  will 
make  it  always  summer  there.  The  cal- 
las  about  the  fountain  will  be  in  flower 
by  Christmas :  the  plant  appears  to 
keep  that  holiday  in  her  secret  heart  all 
summer.  I  close  the  outer  windows  as 
we  go  along,  and  congratulate  myself 
that  we  are  ready  for  winter.  For  the 
winter-garden  I  have  no  responsibility : 
Polly  has  entire  charge  of  it.  I  am 
only  required  to  keep  it  heated,  and  not 


MY  SUMMER  IN  A   GARDEN.  183 

too  hot  either ;  to  smoke  it  often  for  the 
death  of  the  bugs ;  to  water  it  once  a 
day  -,  to  move  this  and  that  into  the  sun 
and  out  of  the  sun  pretty  constantly: 
but  she  does  all  the  work.  We  never 
relinquish  that  theory. 

As  we  pass  around  the  house,  I  dis 
cover  a  boy  in  the  ravine,  filling  a  bag 
with  chestnuts  and  hickory-nuts.  They 
are  not  plenty  this  year ;  and  I  suggest 
the  propriety  of  leaving  some  for  us. 
The  boy  is  a  little  slow  to  take  the  idea : 
but  he  has  apparently  found  the  picking 
poor,  and  exhausted  it ;  for,  as  he  turns 
away  down  the  glen,  he  hails  me  with,  — 

"  Mister,  I  say,  can  you  tell  me  where 
I  can  find  some  walnuts  ?  " 

The  coolness  of  this  world  grows  upon 
me.  It  is  time  to  go  in  and  light  a 
wood-fire  on  the  hearth. 


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1575" 


LD  21-100m-8,'34 


Warner  2474»^          952 

W27 

lay  suiamer  in  a  garden    m 


Uu  19  i9]sf.^A^Q* 


CATALOG  CARDS  fe=BE  WITHDRA 


247482 


u^  c.  BERKEL"-' 


